


MINOR OFFENSES

by spicyshimmy



Series: EARTHBORN [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:25:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Tenth Street Reds. Shepard tries to figure out what it means to be a soldier. Kaidan tries to figure out Shepard. And together, they try to figure out if they can make it work. <i>Shepard was thinking about Kaidan’s ass. That was usually what he thought about—whenever there was time to think. He didn’t get too many chances to do that lately—but then again, when had he ever?</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. SHEPARD

Shepard was thinking about Kaidan’s ass.

That was usually what he thought about—whenever there was time to think. He didn’t get too many chances to do that lately—but then again, when had he ever?

If it wasn’t a visiting off-world kingpin riding Shepard into the ground, then it was a ballbusting training officer looking to do the same thing. After dealing with the former for years, the latter didn’t seem so tough. Just a different kind of tough, with a different set of rules and, okay, maybe less wiggle room.

Shepard’s shoulders ached, along with a host of muscles he’d always known were there, down his sides and around his back, his thighs and his calves. But hot showers were a regular thing, mealtime hours designated and everything, enough proteins to keep a guy’s stomach full all the way through the night—no matter how hard he was being exercised, no matter how rough he was being ridden.

And not being hungry all the time gave Shepard just enough space to think about other things, more than the training courses or the target practice or sweet-talking somebody in charge into looking the other way when he snuck out past curfew.

It gave him room to think about Kaidan’s ass.

Shepard didn’t look for him in the mess hall—not outright, anyway. If he was there and Shepard caught his eye across a few square heads, they could chalk it up to accident or whatever, and Kaidan could blink and look away when Shepard grinned at him. It was easy enough to pick him out from a crowd because of the way he kept his hair, easy enough for Shepard to let his fingers twitch when he thought about the last time it’d been mussed up, then grab a pile of protein packs and stuff them on his tray, keeping those twitchy fingers busy.

Without a weapon in reach at all times, Shepard had to hold onto other stuff instead. And it turned out he was good at hand-to-hand combat practice—especially the  _duck_ and  _dodge_  parts of the exercise.

Shepard finished his dinner the way it tasted the best: fast and alone. All the guys in the hall with pedigrees sat together and they weren’t fun for talking to, anyway; listening to them crack jokes about turians reminded Shepard of where he’d come from, not where he was going. Finch would’ve fit right in with that crowd, big shoulders and sloppy hands and everything, at least until they started bragging about their summer vacation homes off-world.

Then, he would’ve tried to scam ‘em blind.

Good old Finch. Sometimes—when Shepard wasn’t thinking about Kaidan’s ass—he wondered how he was doing and the rest of the Reds.  _Never leave a man behind_ , all the training regulations said. That was number one, only there wasn’t room for questions, nobody to ask if the principles were the same.

Shepard cracked his neck, sliding his tray back into place on his way out of the mess. Curfew was in twenty and they had an early day tomorrow, doing situation training marathons until, one by one, they screwed up and dropped out, leaving only one last man standing.

The night after it’d been Kaidan on top, Shepard found them a spot—a situation room with a lock-code he’d cracked, easy—for a little privacy. There wasn’t much of that in the dorms and maybe the situation room didn’t have the best view of the bay, but there was a slide switcher for holo-projectors to imitate different environments, and Shepard liked to get there early, picking out the night sky from Palaven or the sunrise on Mars.

He never asked Kaidan to do that sort of stuff, even though he was smart and the skills might’ve been good to develop. Cracking codes, breaking and entering—that came naturally to Shepard, and if someone’s fingerprints were gonna be left on the keypad, they might as well be his, not somebody with a mom and dad who’d be disappointed in them if they ever found out about it.

Shepard checked all the angles, up and down the hall, three o’clock and nine o’clock, then punched in the code and slipped inside.

It was dark and quiet, just the way he liked it. Shepard wasn’t Kaidan—he didn’t have a head full of fancy implants that needed safeguarding against every knock and rattle—but some of Kaidan’s habits for keeping comfortable were starting to rub off on him. Looking for a quiet place to think had been the first trick he’d picked up; Shepard hadn’t even realized how much he needed his own space to get back to at the end of the day until he didn’t have it anymore.

Living with the same guys you fought beside was supposed to breed loyalty—or at the very least some kind of unity among the raw recruits. Shepard guessed it was harder to leave a guy in the field when you knew what toothpaste he used, or what kind of protein she always grabbed first at breakfast.

He was good at those details from a lifetime of living off them. When the littlest change in a turf-gang leader’s habits meant walking into an ambush, you learned to read a stranger fast.

It wasn’t that big of a deal. Not really. One of the staff lieutenants thought it was fun to play memory games with him, gossip about which training sergeants had lactose allergies but couldn’t stay away from the ice cream, that sort of thing.

Seemed kinda pointless to Shepard, but whatever kept him in good standing with the blues. He just needed to make it through marine training and then he could stop looking over his shoulder.

That was the plan, anyway. But Shepard knew better than anybody how easy something like  _that_ could cross wires and fuck up.

There were a few new simulations programmed into the system this time, like someone out there thought Shepard’s romantic interludes could use some extra juice. There was a nightscape of Illium, cars zipping between the lit-up buildings, almost like a private star system unto itself—but there was also a Thessian garden, with crawling green vines and a decorative fountain set into the middle.

Shepard didn’t have a clue what either of those had to do with combat. Probably something about how the enemy could strike anywhere—or maybe a lesson on avoiding terrain destruction when there could be civilians nearby.

The Alliance-grade training rifles were bigger than the pistols Shepard was used to working with and the Kessler IIIs were way better than any of the second-hand goods Shepard had been packing with the Reds. He could still feel the weight of one of the new weapons in his arms, lifting it, sighting his target in the cross-hairs—an invisible menace in-between the skyscrapers, just past a narrow side-alley, under a flashing neon awning. Danger was all around at all times, hostiles threatening civilians, batarian slaving gangs pumping live rounds into the crowd, and Shepard measured each angle he’d use to avoid ricochet, only break a  _few_  full glass windows while taking down the enemy, that sort of thing. If this’d been a real training run, there’d be holographic citizens—turians and asari, cops and families and NCOs—all around him. It’d be just like a real city anywhere and the only difference from the streets he knew was that you could find a few more aliens off-world.

It wasn’t flight simulation, which most of the guys preferred, but actually, Shepard liked these rooms better. Crates littered the area for cover and he ducked down behind one, feeling the cold press of his dog tags against his chest, between the light cotton of his Alliance t-shirt and his bare skin.

When he popped back up to take his invisible mark with his invisible Kessler, his target was Kaidan Alenko, not a vorcha showing too many teeth.

‘If I’m interrupting something…’ Kaidan began, and Shepard whipped his hand back, rubbing the freshly-buzzed hair at the bottom of his head instead, offering Kaidan a half-salute in greeting.

‘Just getting a little extra practice in,’ Shepard replied. ‘Never can be too prepared, like Anderson always says.’

Kaidan picked his way past a few of the empty crates, one of them scorched at the corner from a routine session in teaching a bunch of green kids how  _not_  to blow themselves up with a frag grenade. Shepard could still hear the ringing in his ears for days after the first one went off—more powerful than anything Finch had mixed up from the right pinched ingredients for a job. Deadly. Contained. Hot as hell.

Just like Kaidan in that t-shirt, Shepard thought. All the hard training suited him, muscles Shepard’s fingers knew better than the ones on his own body—no matter how much they ached, no matter how often they reminded him they were there and he was using them way too much lately.

Shepard sat, one elbow on his thigh, wiping his palm against his fatigues. Kaidan glanced over his shoulder to see the Illium cityscape behind them, face lit up by the glow of the lights.

It wasn’t like looking at him in darkness and starshine, but it was close.

‘So,’ Shepard said. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey,’ Kaidan replied.

He took his time closing the final distance between them and that was always the part Shepard liked best, if only because he also hated it the most. Waiting was the worst; waiting was the greatest. Kaidan making him wait—whether he knew he was doing it or it came naturally to him—was the only way Shepard would take it, biting his lower lip when their knees finally bumped, waiting for Kaidan to look down at him.

‘What was it this time?’ Kaidan asked.

‘Vorcha.’ Shepard snaked his hand to the small of Kaidan’s back, a touch that made Kaidan catch his breath—then lose it again. Shepard saw the quick rise of his chest and the equally quick fall and imagined the skittering of his pulse, thinking about how he was the one who did that, on  _and_  off field-practice. ‘They were threatening civilian livelihood. What else could I do?’

‘Remind me not to travel to Illium with you anytime soon,’ Kaidan said, but Shepard could hear—and feel—the small grin in his voice.

Shepard grinned back, Kaidan’s lips twitching as he pressed them together and finally,  _finally_  looked Shepard’s way.

‘We could always spend a romantic night in a garden on Thessia, if killing imaginary vorcha together isn’t your thing,’ Shepard added. ‘You just didn’t like our picnic on the desert sands of Tuchanka last time, so I figured something like this’d be more your style.’

‘Tuchanka’s a bombshell,’ Kaidan said. ‘And before you say anything—it’s not the good kind, either.’

‘I dunno.’ They were too close for Shepard to do his usual thing, pacing around Kaidan like an asari vanguard taking in her unlikely prey. He made do with what he had, drawing Kaidan down, nose rubbing along his hairline to his temple. He smelled like whatever products he used to keep his hair in regulation form—he hadn’t cut it down, and Shepard was grateful for that, though he had enough sense to keep his mouth shut about it. Whenever he complimented someone, for some reason, they always ended up feeling offended. ‘Think there’s something kinda beautiful about the way it keeps on ticking—not many places could after that kind of nuclear detonation.’

‘So that’s your idea of romantic,’ Kaidan said. He was studying the Illium horizon, looking for vorcha or maybe something more elusive. But it was just a holo-image, projected on a bunch of rounded white walls. ‘Total annihilation, then seeing what grows back from the ashes.’

‘Yeah,’ Shepard replied. ‘That sounds about right.’

They’d been drilled in close combat for weeks. Shepard knew how to fall without injuring anything vital, and he knew how to take down an opponent without killing the romance, too. It was easy work to flip Kaidan over his hip, rolling them so they’d land flat against the practice mats.

It was Kaidan who added his own private flair to the landing, throwing out a biotic wave that took them down gently.

And here Shepard had been planning to show off his skills—kinda hard to do when you were messing around with a biotic who always had to take precautions.

_Dating_ , someone like Kaidan might’ve said.  _Dating_ a biotic who always had to take precautions _._ But there hadn’t been any actual dates, so using that word seemed too close to wishful thinking on  _someone’s_  part.

‘I see how it is.’ Kaidan’s skin rippled with the aftereffects of the biotics, dark blue light lingering in his eyes. Shepard could feel the kinetic barriers tickling his skin. ‘This isn’t a picnic. It’s an ambush.’

‘Can’t it be both?’ Shepard asked.

Complicated definitions for two complicated people. Shepard felt heat in his belly and between his legs, like one of those carry-the-rocket-flare runs they’d done a week back, slogging through simulated weather scenarios—Noveria cold was the worst, blasts of icy wind hitting them from all sides, Shepard tucked around his rocket flare to keep it safe. He got it to the rendezvous point and lit it, watching it burst high above the training grounds, then sizzle out while the sprinklers shut off.

That always happened when he was close to Kaidan. Or when he was thinking about Kaidan, or when Kaidan was across the room, or when Kaidan was too far away to locate. It happened when Shepard was sleeping and when he was sneaking out, anything but sleep on his mind, but it was more intense now than ever, bodies pressed together, Shepard’s lips right above Kaidan’s mouth.

Kaidan didn’t blink. He must’ve seen something in Shepard’s eyes because his sparked with more than kinetic barrier reflection, and then they started kissing, right there in front of Illium.

Well—sort of.

Kaidan’s mouth tasted like toothpaste; he was totally the type. He always brushed his teeth before they met up and it was stuff like that, the way he shivered when his t-shirt rode up over his belly, the way his nipples got hard right away even without simulated Noveria snowstorms to help, that made Shepard want to kiss him harder, until his lips were swollen. Shepard did, slipping him some tongue, a hand between his legs while the mat squeaked softly beneath them.

Kaidan was hard, too. Knowing it, feeling it, was about as satisfying as getting that rocket flare to point, maybe more. It burned just as bright and just as hot, and lasted a little bit longer, tasting just as sweet.

Kaidan’s eyes had fallen shut by the time Shepard moved on to his jaw—clean-shaven, smelling fresh, like soap. Shepard bit Kaidan’s ear and his pulse and got under his belt like breaking a lock code; he had more practice with that, but at least it made his fingers quick and careful. Not subtle, but then, who needed to be?

Not Shepard. Not when Kaidan arched up after his touch and Shepard rubbed him through his briefs. It was always something between them, extra training or sore muscles or the ribs Shepard kept breaking, the bruises down his side from the blows he took in order to deflect the ones that counted.

It all went out of his head when he was between Kaidan’s legs, his splayed knees, touching him the way he’d been thinking about all day.

Eventually, it was gonna grind to a halt. Shepard was gonna show up to their place and flip the switch, choose a setting, snipe imaginary hostiles for an hour or so, until he realized Kaidan wasn’t coming.

It wasn’t Alliance training that kept Shepard two steps ahead of present conditions—it was street experience, figuring out what was around each corner before turning down that way or not.

Shepard rubbed a little faster, maybe too fast. Kaidan moaned, then cut the noise off with the back of his hand and came into Shepard’s fingers. Shepard watched his face, lips parted instead of pressed together, hand falling away from his mouth, until he had to look somewhere else.

One of the signs switched over, bathing them in pink light instead of blue. Shepard blinked, and it was all the time Kaidan needed to flip them over, redefining the odds and their positions, pinning Shepard’s back to the mat.

Shepard could get used to that. He already had, and the thought was just as dangerous as Kaidan’s hands on him, jerking him off so damn easily.

‘That was…really romantic,’ Kaidan said, still bent over Shepard’s chest, braced one-handed at his side. His wrist bumped one of the old bruises and Shepard didn’t flinch, although that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel it all through his right flank.

‘I could take you to a movie.’ Shepard blinked up at the sign above them, advertising the latest box-office hit. Alliance sure did love their pointless details. ‘How do you feel about The 840-Year-Old Virgin? It’s playing right now; maybe we can still make the show at nineteen-hundred.’

‘Pretty sure the movie’s supposed to come first and the other things after,’ Kaidan replied.

‘You asking me out, Kaidan?’ Shepard asked.

Maybe it was too much.

Sure enough, Kaidan shifted, eyes flicking to the simulated city around them. He was trying not to make a face, but Shepard caught him at it anyway, big brown eyes halfway to rolling skyward. Shepard thought about feeling guilty, then didn’t bother.

Kaidan was a big boy. He knew what he’d signed himself up for.

‘I don’t think we get shore leave until we’ve earned it,’ Kaidan said. Despite his reaction, recoil like a pistol overheating in Shepard’s hand, he hadn’t bothered to pull away. There was something warm in his gaze, a laziness in his muscles that said he’d let his guard down, even if the topic had gone fraught with field mines. ‘Besides, you…really can’t do something like that in a movie theater.’

‘See, now  _that_ just sounds like a challenge,’ Shepard said. He’d been thinking about working another angle—such as surprise that Kaidan might think he couldn’t behave himself in a dark room with no one to make them jump and salute. But this was more fun. He wriggled his hips, just to remind Kaidan he might’ve been down but he wasn’t out. Not by a long shot. ‘I bet people do it all the time.’

‘That’s not the  _best_ reason you’ve come up with to do something.’ Kaidan looked like he was thinking about kissing again, so Shepard made the decision for him, straining the sore muscle in his neck to close the distance between them.

Apparently, reprogramming the simulation room for the night didn’t count as a date. Which Shepard had known all along—but knowing something and hearing it fresh from Kaidan’s lips were two different things.

He didn’t have to think all that hard to know which he preferred, either.

No matter the battle, Kaidan’s mouth won every time.

‘We’d better get back,’ Shepard said, nipping at Kaidan’s lower lip so he’d feel it a couple hours down the road. ‘I don’t want anyone thinking I’m a bad influence on you, Private Alenko.’

‘Too late,’ Kaidan said.

Shepard pulled away to do his fly back up, then headed for the projector, flipping the switch off. It was dark in the room, quiet and their little secret, but it was more like the movie after it’d ended, not before it was about to start.

‘See you around, private,’ Shepard added, waiting for Kaidan to head out first, then bringing up the rear, a position that—at least—afforded him a pretty decent view, if not a distinct tactical advantage.

*


	2. ALENKO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan thinks too much.

Shepard wasn’t the guy who kissed you goodnight.

Kaidan had known that for a while, ever since he’d learned Shepard _was_ the guy who helped you break into your own house, or got you tangled up in Red Sand busts, or rigged a training course to show you a short-frame loop of a planet you’d never been to. Stuff like that was—almost—out of this world.

It also left Kaidan with dark circles under his eyes come morning and too much to think about while he should’ve been asleep.

Whatever they had going on, it wasn’t regulation, not the way Shepard kept his hair buzzed short and his boots clean according to standard protocol.

Kaidan had been through the whole thing before; this wasn’t his first time being trained for something bigger than he was and he knew exactly where doing things off the record could get you. It was more than being dumped in hot water or slapped on the wrist.

But he kept going in for it anyway.

He hadn’t signed up just so he could have his twentieth birthday where nobody gave a damn about the date, or so he could burn ten times as many calories as when he was at home. He’d signed up because it was what he needed—not because it was a distraction and not because anybody else was doing it. It’d just…worked out this way, after careful consideration, a few long conversations with Mom that helped make some things clear and others more complicated.

Kaidan still remembered that, sitting across from her at the table, telling her it wasn’t about Dad—or about Shepard, or about what’d happened already. It was about the future and what he needed, how he had to figure his life out this way.

But he’d never said Shepard hadn’t been the inspiration. If he had, he would’ve been lying.

It was a lot to think about, weighing heavily on Kaidan’s chest like Shepard’s body when they stretched out next to each other. Not cuddling—that’d never happen, not on training mats with sweat sticky at the small of Kaidan’s back and Shepard’s hand still down the front of Kaidan’s pants—but close together, which was...something. Better than the alternative, hopefully.

They fit—in the most basic way, the most obvious one, whenever Shepard buried his face against Kaidan’s throat or Kaidan pushed into the palm of his hand. And it was good, really, _really_ good, a feeling he couldn’t get anywhere else, something more than well-apportioned pain meds to make the headaches go away.

They had him on a carefully controlled regimen. Apparently some biotics with L2 implants like his had a habit of getting too liberal with the dosage, but Kaidan took one every morning and one every night, one extra in the middle of the day if they did training in high-pressure situations, something with flashing lights or frag grenades.

Kaidan dropped down into his bunk, quiet enough that none of the other guys in his dorm heard him come in. Someone grunted, snorting in their sleep, and Kaidan pushed his face into the pillow, thinking about Shepard. His mouth, mostly; his fingers. The scar on his scalp, which Kaidan always wanted to kiss but hadn’t yet. He didn’t know why. Something was holding him back and he had too much going on to figure out what that’d be.

Zero five-hundred came too early. It always did. The other guys were kitted up and ready but Kaidan fell into line fast, easy, old instinct kicking in and making his back go straight.

Vyrnnus wouldn’t have accepted anything less. There was no reason to give the same to Anderson, who was a better guy in every possible way.

Kaidan did his best not to make eye contact with Shepard. It wasn’t for the reasons he might’ve thought—some kind of hot and cold ploy that would make their time together extra fraught with illicit possibility. Kaidan didn’t go in for games like that. Not his style, not to mention a waste of his time.

A waste of _their_ time.

No, mostly he just couldn’t focus knowing Shepard was watching him—and the easiest way to pretend like he wasn’t was never to confirm that he was.

Maybe they should’ve been in different training groups.

But only Kaidan knew Shepard’s little secret—and even then he didn’t really know _anything_ for sure _._ There was no hard proof, nothing for him to go on beyond a hunch, only Kaidan’s instincts were usually good. He didn’t have a record of exactly how much younger Shepard was—but he got a feeling there’d been some date-shuffling to get him enlisted all the same.

That, and Kaidan’s experience should’ve put him somewhere a little beyond the rest of the green cadets, but you couldn’t cite the years you’d spent training in a program the Alliance wanted to keep buried.  As far as they were concerned, brain camp had never happened. There was no Jump Zero. So Kaidan had never gone there—and here he was, starting on the ground floor with everyone else.

It wasn’t so bad. They separated biotics three days out of the week to train with Captain Tiller, who’d spent the better part of the last decade learning from an asari commando team.

‘If they had their heads on straight, they’d be inviting the matriarch here to teach you kids,’ she’d said on the very first day. She was an L2 like Kaidan, which he was starting to discover made him a bit of a standout.

The L3 implants were safer, but they weren’t as powerful.

He still didn’t know if that extra juice was worth the headaches. At least he wasn’t embarrassing himself.

‘You look like shit, Alenko,’ said a girl to his right. When she elbowed him in the side, he felt the bruise he’d gotten in basic training three days ago; Shepard had a matching one, both of them caught by the same blindside, and neither of them talking about it.

It was Williams.

Kaidan recognized her because she didn’t get along with a lot of people, but she seemed to like Shepard just fine. By extension, she’d started talking to Kaidan—when she wasn’t busy blowing body parts loose off of training dummies with her assault rifle.

She was gonna make one hell of a soldier someday.

Until then, she made one hell of a scary trainee.

Dad had stories about that kind of attitude, that kind of muscle—live wires, in a way, and you couldn’t tell if they’d work for you or against you until it happened. Kaidan still didn’t know what stories Dad would’ve had about guys like Shepard, probably because there was nobody else like Shepard. Not in Alliance training, not among the ranks, not anywhere.

‘You going to be able to keep up your end of training today, Alenko?’ Williams added, elbowing him in the side again—like she knew his weak spots and like she thought pointing them out was necessary.

She was right, of course, but that didn’t make the bruise any less sore when she jabbed it.

‘I’m fine,’ Kaidan said. ‘I won’t let you down.’

Having Williams as a field training partner was less distracting than having Shepard on his team, going through environment simulation runs with him by Kaidan’s side. And that was exactly why inter-group relationships were discouraged. Developing fraternity was an important part of the system; Dad always said that, and it was something Kaidan knew from the way brain camp broke down, because they _hadn’t_ found that camaraderie in the end. But fraternization… That wasn’t the same.

Kaidan swallowed. It was a bad day for headaches and the only thing marking his time was the thought of getting an extra painkiller after lunch, at exactly twelve-hundred.

‘You can let me down all you like—just as long as you don’t _slow_ me down,’ Williams replied.

It was good for morale to have somebody who challenged you, Kaidan reminded himself as they geared up in the practice room. If there wasn’t someone biting at his heels he wouldn’t feel the danger; it’d just be a bunch of props and some fake explosions, sprinkler systems dumping water on their heads to slow them down. They were doing sandstorms that week, working on executing ground maneuvers with intermittent communications, their headpieces cutting in and out, nothing to go on but timing and instinct.

Williams already had one of the highest scores from the day before.

And they _all_ had sand in places nobody wanted to think about.

Kaidan pulled his helmet’s visor down with a click, a simulated Mars danger zone in front of them looking about as real as the 3-D scenery from the latest holiday movie Kaidan had been to with Mom. Without meaning to, he thought about Shepard—on their fake Illium, ready for anything that jumped out at him, because that was the only life he knew.

Shepard was gonna make one hell of a soldier, too. If he could stop breaking the rules for long enough to get there.

‘Move out!’ Williams shouted, disappearing through the first gust of wind, and Kaidan got his head back in the game without letting himself get distracted again.

They clocked in at a decent time—not their best, short by fourteen point three seconds—and Williams pulled off her helmet to wipe her face, cheeks red and forehead sweating.

‘What was that about not slowing me down, Alenko?’ she asked.

They ran it again. Kaidan covered the hostile fire peppering them with a kinetic shield that kept Ashley from being pinged right in the chest plate, and it kept the sand out, too. It didn’t help with the low visibility they were already dealing with, but Ashley managed to take down the enemy VIs without having to spot them. She was just that good.

Their second round earned them the best time of the day so far and a clap on the shoulder each before they headed up to observation, where they’d watch the next team try to take them down a peg.

Kaidan wiped the gritty sweat off the back of his neck, prickling his scalp, and avoided touching the scar tucked against it. Williams shook the sand out of her hair, then twisted it back into a bun, eyes on the window that separated them from the current team on the field.

Shepard was down there and Williams was in the front row to watch.

After a few seconds, Kaidan headed over to join her, feeling himself start to sweat again—just not for the same reasons.

He didn’t blame Williams for wanting to see Shepard at work.

Shepard didn’t carry himself like the other members of his team, grabbing a pistol off the rack and testing its weight, pretending to fire it like he’d done last night—with a weapon he didn’t even have in his hands. It just…suited him, in a way the armor didn’t. _That_ slowed him down, making him seem bigger than Kaidan remembered.

Or maybe all the food in the mess hall, all the exercise, was finally agreeing with him. If he’d put on some muscle, Kaidan couldn’t think about it in front of everyone and especially not in front of Shepard.

Ruling out those two options didn’t actually leave him that much wiggle room. At the end of the day, Kaidan figured it was none of his business. If any of that year’s recruits had signed up knowing each other already then they all had the good sense not to act like it. Logically, there was no reason for Kaidan to monitor Shepard’s progress, just like there was no reason for him to remember the skinny gang kid he’d pulled a job with for some asari crime boss.

But it was still weird adjusting to the sudden change. And if Kaidan was feeling the heat from settling in, then Shepard must have been getting it double. At least their surroundings, the military jargon, the uniforms and even the pistols, were familiar to Kaidan. In some ways, it was like coming home—to a place Kaidan didn’t know he’d already visited.

He could only guess what it felt like for Shepard. His pants were the only thing about him that opened up easy.

The warning light flashed, telling all non-participants to shut the hell up so the next group could focus. Williams leaned forward, elbows braced against her thighs. She didn’t bother to hide her interest, so Kaidan could assume there wasn’t anything going on under the surface, just outside regulation. More likely she was keeping an eye on Shepard to learn his moves in case they ever went toe to toe in basic combat.

It was a compliment. She thought he was good enough to worry about beating.

Watching him down in the practice room, Kaidan got it. Williams was right.

As soon as the green light flared, Shepard took vanguard position, directing the other recruits to flank their approaching opponents. They went for cover easily, but not Shepard. The armor had slowed him down but he was using it to his advantage now, taking a few rubber ballistics to the chest in order to gain ground against the enemy.

Not many kids fresh out of the nest would be willing to risk even the training hits for a few extra points. But Shepard was used to fighting with nothing but his beat-up old leather jacket between him and the _real_ bullets. He probably saw this drill as a walk in the park.

‘Reckless,’ Williams said. But Kaidan could tell she was impressed.

Kaidan had seen Shepard at his best a few times now, when their schedules overlapped like this. They had to know what their allies were capable of as much as they had to know what their enemies were packing and Kaidan studied both with equal concentration. There were two sides to every strategy—except Shepard only had one side, the one that rushed out in front, took most of the heat, and got his training squad through behind him every time. He wasn’t a straightforward guy but the tactic came to him naturally. There was a pattern developing; he was the sort of soldier whose team you wanted to be a part of, ducking for cover when he had to but always popping back up again to support the rest of the group.

He’d been hit five times by Kaidan’s count when they made it to base formation and the clock went off. Shepard wove through the blasts of sand from the machines like he belonged on that Tuchanka desert he liked so much—and Kaidan had to wonder if he hadn’t been practicing there, not just planning post-curfew picnics.

Kaidan rubbed his jaw, keeping himself from smiling.

Impressive as it was, it wasn’t the best tactic. Shepard could’ve done the same thing with way less personal sacrifice and way fewer dings in his practice armor. This was a simulation room, not an alley out behind a nightclub.

The machines shut off and the sand stopped swirling. Shepard took off his helmet and glanced up to the observation glass like he knew Kaidan was there; he didn’t wink or grin or salute but he held his focus for a few extra seconds before he turned back to his team.

And then, Kaidan watched as he got benched—personally, by Anderson himself.

Kaidan didn’t know what they were talking about down there but he didn’t have to read lips to get the gist. Even he knew Shepard was putting himself in danger when it wasn’t necessary; to anyone else it might read like showing off, but Kaidan had seen Shepard use his body like a shield before, like he didn’t think it mattered or like he thought it was the only way. Maybe it was sometimes, but not always.

‘Reckless,’ Williams said again. She respected it and even shared some of those instincts with Shepard, but she could see what Kaidan saw: a chest plate all banged up from rubber rounds.

If they’d been live ones, Shepard would be a lot more than just winded from the run.

Still, it took a certain kind of something for a guy to do what Shepard did without stopping to think about getting caught in the cross-fire. Those rubber rounds hurt like hell; Kaidan knew that from experience. He understood the bruises on Shepard’s chest now, the ones Kaidan’s mouth hadn’t left, and he saw Captain Anderson watching Shepard across the training room, an aide taking notes in a datapad.

‘Least they didn’t beat our time,’ Williams added, pushing off the bench. ‘He’s good, though. Crazy, but you have to be.’

Kaidan didn’t ask her where she’d learned something like that. For all he knew, she had a brain camp in her past too. Maybe more of them did than the ones that didn’t.

His head throbbed, low and dull at his temples, then sharp at the base of his skull. They filed out of the observation room heading toward the mess and Kaidan split off to get his meds from the nurse, then ate more than enough lunch to replace the calories he’d burned since breakfast.

He didn’t see Shepard again for the rest of the day.

*


	3. SHEPARD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard's list of people to respect grows by two. He deals with it by shooting things.

Guys like Anderson didn’t get pissed, not in the way Shepard was used to seeing. They got disappointed—only they actually meant it, instead of using the word like a weapon, like _watch your back, kid_.

Shepard straightened, though it felt like a shoulder twitch more than anything else. Across the way, standing behind his desk, Anderson sighed. ‘All right. At ease.’

Shepard dropped his hand from the salute, knowing full well Alliance ease had a different definition than the one he was used to working with. A lot less forgiving, too.

‘Sir,’ Shepard said.

The word still had to go around tasting funny in his mouth, like last year’s stale proteins, or dinner fished out of a garbage disposal unit.

‘Being a good soldier isn’t about what you can show off, Shepard,’ Anderson continued. ‘I want you to understand that. If you’re leading a squad and you get yourself killed, that’s _your_ men you put in danger.’

‘I wasn’t—’ Shepard started, then bit down on his tongue. ‘Showing off’ meant something different here than back with the Reds, same as _ease_. It was anything you did out of formation, anytime you stood out ahead of the other guys—the ones who were too scared of a little pain to do what needed doing.

Shepard wasn’t that into training exercises. He got why they were necessary—and he even got why recruits like Williams worked so hard to do well in them—but at the end of the day, they didn’t _mean_ anything.

He’d take a few bruises for a chance to get his name on the leaderboards. He’d take worse than that if lives were at stake, and it wasn’t just posturing—it wasn’t just blowing hot air up Anderson’s ass. Hell, even Kaidan knew that about him. But it didn’t exactly seem like the kind of thing Anderson was gonna appreciate, even if Shepard had it explained to him nice and easy with witnesses and everything.

‘You were,’ Anderson said. ‘Whether you think that’s what you were doing or not.’ He fiddled with a datapad on his desk, but he didn’t linger there for long enough to punch in anything permanent on Shepard’s record. ‘I’ve been at this a long time, kid. You think I don’t see it when recruits come in feeling like they’ve got something to prove?’

‘Isn’t that better?’ Shepard felt funny with his hands folded behind him. It was tough not to rock back and forth, from the balls of his feet to his heels. Motion was like sleight of hand. It hid things better than staying stock still. ‘Better than not wanting to prove anything, I mean. Doesn’t it just mean they’ll work harder without added motivation?’

Anderson sighed, rubbing a hand over his big, square head. Apparently headaches were catching when Shepard was around. Regulation haircut didn’t suit Anderson as well as it did some, but he didn’t seem like the type who cared one way or the other—probably because he had guys like Shepard to worry at his ankles like a pack of wild varren and that seemed more important to him than what he saw in the mirror at the end of the day.

Shepard actually waited, listening for Anderson’s reply.

‘It _means_ they’ll take unnecessary risks for no good reason,’ he said. ‘Like that stunt you pulled in training today—do you know how many rounds you took to the chest breaking cover like that?’

‘Someone had to do it,’ Shepard said. ‘…Sir. The enemy was advancing on our position. Situation like that, in my experience, you either you break cover or you get yanked out of it. I’d rather do it on my own terms.’

‘No kidding,’ Anderson said. He tossed the datapad to one side, fixing all his attention on Shepard. ‘In your experience, huh? What…experience would that be?’

‘You know how it is,’ Shepard said.

Anderson leaned against the side of his desk, one hand on his thigh. ‘Pretend I don’t and enlighten me, Shepard.’

Shepard glanced to the datapad. He hadn’t paid much for the false records he’d used to enlist, only his life savings—but considering how little of that there was, he couldn’t trust it was the best mock-up job on the market. Still, there weren’t any _real_ records of him out there to replace them with, and he knew Alliance brass wouldn’t waste time and resources digging up information on some kid. If they had their doubts, they’d kick him from the program.

More likely than not, they wouldn’t give a damn.

Shepard cleared his throat. ‘Had some training before, sir,’ he said.

‘I can tell,’ Anderson replied. ‘But it didn’t do you a lick of good. Whatever style you think you know—that’s not how we do things _here_. And it’s my job to make sure you don’t get stationed somewhere half-cocked and ready to get your head vaporized first thing off the shuttle. If it was, I’d sleep that much easier at night.’

Shepard’s lips twitched. He knew what guys in positions of authority thought of him when he grinned—even when it was nothing more than a compliment—so he bit the inside of his cheek to keep it from showing. Didn’t mean he couldn’t feel it, though. They were having a fun time, whether Anderson knew it or not. ‘So would I, sir.’

‘The worst thing about this job, though,’ Anderson continued, ‘is seeing kids like you—kids with real potential—think they know everything right out of the airlock. Unlearning bad habits is ten times harder than starting with a clean slate. I don’t care how well you’re doing in target practice—I don’t care if you hit dead center every time in gale-force winds with testing VIs zapping you nonstop—if I see you pull a stunt like that again without thinking it through first, I’ll send you packing myself.’

‘Sir,’ Shepard said. ‘Yes, sir.’

At least he wouldn’t have to pack much. All he had were the dog tags he was wearing, regulation t-shirt and fatigues, boots that actually fit for a change and socks without holes in them. And he had a feeling he’d have to return everything they’d given him when he signed up, which would leave him with less than his skivvies.

Anderson’s posture eased, something sparking in the back of his eyes. ‘You know, when you say that word, it _almost_ sounds disrespectful?’

‘Not to you it isn’t, sir,’ Shepard said.

‘Get out of here and go charm someone else,’ Anderson replied.

Those sounded like acting orders to Shepard so he did, with one more salute for good measure, moving double-time so Anderson wouldn’t arrive at the quick decision _that_ came off as disrespectful, too.

With Anderson, he really didn’t mean it. There were a few guys in the place who were worth the time it took them to get to the point—and Anderson was on the top of that list.

Just like Shepard was at the top of his class.

Getting there and staying there weren’t about pride, although there was no cutting it out of the picture completely. Shepard rubbed his ribs where the bruises from that morning were still sore as hell, picking up his pace as he moved through the halls. Laying low, keeping out of sight—that was the old him, the one that stuck to the shadows and covered for Finch’s fuck-ups. The new him had two rectangles of pounded metal with _Shepard, John_ on the back, his blood-type and a made-up birthday, and an Alliance t-shirt he sweated it out in every night during private exercise sessions.

Whether he engaged in those alone or with Kaidan depended on how bad Kaidan’s headaches had been that day.

Shepard knew from the way he’d looked at lunch that Kaidan was having a flare-up; bright lights set him off and so did outer-system conditions, squinting into the sandstorms or shouting over the winds. The Mars session couldn’t have been good for him and what he needed—more than anything—was somebody to look after him.

Somebody like Mrs. Alenko, who would’ve fit in just fine barking orders alongside Anderson.

Maybe Shepard was taking it a step too far. Alenko was a big boy—big where it counted, anyway—and from the records Shepard had snuck a peak of, he was top of his class in biotics training. Shepard didn’t know what any of the breakdowns meant, like Kaidan could be reduced to a bunch of numbers and fractions, but he’d done enough to impress his drill instructors.

Knowing that shouldn’t have mattered as much as it did.

It wasn’t like Shepard wasn’t used to looking out for other people. That was kind of his thing, actually, the position he landed in whether he was shooting for it or not. Those were the instincts, born and bred, that led him to take point. If no one else was gonna make a play and somebody could bite it if he wasn’t the one to step up—yeah, parameters like that changed a guy. And he’d started to explain as much to Anderson before deciding it wasn’t worth it to go that route.

Action was what convinced these Alliance types, not words. So maybe Shepard had decided at least one of them was worth convincing.

His time in the Reds had given him a crash course in leadership, the education he wasn’t willing to own up to in front of Anderson. But the old guy was smart. He already had an inkling or Shepard was a hanar’s uncle.

That didn’t mean they had to talk about how it made them both feel or anything.

Shepard’s skills would show on the field or they wouldn’t. The latter’d lead to him getting kicked out, which was probably what Anderson had been trying to tell him when he hauled him in for a one-on-one, only Shepard didn’t do so well with pep talks. They got under his skin—and not in the good way.

It wasn’t exactly something he wanted to go over point by point with Kaidan, either. As far as Shepard knew, _he’d_ never been called in for a heart to heart, seeing as how he was top of his class and all.

Kaidan would’ve told Shepard the attention meant something; Shepard could just hear him analyzing it already. He’d take a long, hard look at the information from straight on instead of sideways—like he was always looking at Shepard—and say it almost seemed that Anderson wanted to groom Shepard for something more than infantry grunt-work, so wasn’t that a good thing?

Sure, it could’ve been. But it was also a talk Shepard wasn’t ready to have yet. If both Finch and Anderson had seen the same thing in him, then _somebody_ was looking at him cock-eyed and needed their eyes checked.

Shepard didn’t know what was funnier—picturing Finch in glasses, or picturing Anderson wearing the same.

He dodged a group of biotics heading down for practice, moving in the opposite direction from the pack—but also away from the dorm wing, where he probably _should’ve_ been headed. If sleeping alone with a stolen pistol under his head instead of a pillow was bad for peace and relaxation, so was a room full of other guys, smelling like sweat and going over somebody’s contraband—an ancient issue of Fornax they thought they were so badass to get their hands on. They all acted like they’d never seen a naked drell before.

Amateurs.

There were a couple of messages on Shepard’s omni-tool, a standard issue he’d jerry-rigged to get news from Earth and to keep Finch from shitting himself over being left in charge.

He’d check them later—if Kaidan wasn’t around. But in the meantime, Kaidan—and Kaidan’s headaches—were priority number one.

That, and Shepard was looking forward to seeing him. He thought he had it figured out now. Thessian gardens, maybe a pool—it’d be calm, soothing, no sudden lights or loud noises. They could sleep or something, no big deal, without anyone snoring through the night in the next bunk over.

As plans went, it was far from Shepard’s worst.

‘Hey, Shepard,’ a familiar voice called to him, its owner flanking him from his blind-spot like a real professional. ‘You headed for the practice rooms, huh?’

Shepard was. He just didn’t want it to be that obvious—and especially not to Williams, who came up on him like a sandstorm in the Mars simulation room, about as sudden and even less easy to ignore.

The first thing Shepard remembered thinking about Williams was that she would’ve _killed_ in the Reds. If he’d had right-hand muscle like her, the gang would’ve been more than a credit-chit-a-night operation. They could’ve gone far together—if Williams’s hard head didn’t get in the way more often than not. 

And Shepard had been on the wrong end of that hard head more than once. He still had bruises from the first time, a lasting impression that didn’t so much heal as it did change colors.

She was all right, Williams. She knew her way around rifles and she knew how to corner a guy, in or out of training, and Shepard could respect that. He _did_ respect it. Wanting to deal with it, though—that was different.

Shepard didn’t change his pace, letting her keep time. An old street tactic, but it worked anywhere, even in the spic-and-span halls of an Alliance training base just off-world. ‘Something like that,’ he said.

‘Like you don’t have a drop on the rest of the class already.’ Williams snorted, impressed, long strides taking her out in front. ‘Extra practice, huh? So _that’s_ your secret.’

‘I’ve got a lot of secrets, actually.’ Shepard grinned, showing some teeth. ‘Just like I’ve got a lot of scars. I’m not exactly trying to keep this under wraps, though. Just going to shoot a few targets, take in terrain. Nothing too interesting.’

‘Sounds interesting to me,’ Williams said. ‘I’m in.’

Shepard glanced over his shoulder once, casual. Williams’s jaw was hard, probably harder to break than salarian code-lock tech.

There went any plans for a nice night on Thessia, watching the shadows on the leaves or the moonlight reflecting off the water or whatever it was people did over there when they weren’t shooting VI hostiles between the trees.

‘Practice works better when you have someone along to kick your ass,’ Williams added. ‘Just ‘cause we’re not being graded doesn’t mean I’m gonna go easy on you, Shepard.’

‘Can’t wait,’ Shepard said.

It wasn’t the ass situation he’d been hoping for that night—but being in the Reds for so long had seen to it that hope wasn’t something he was committed to either way.

When he messed with the lock to get them in, Williams raised a brow but didn’t say anything. She’d noticed it—but she wanted the practice, too. Shepard knew that look; he’d seen it too many times to count, on skinnier faces than hers, with darker shadows under their eyes.

Everybody had something to prove. That was one thing they all had in common, not just gang kids or Alliance brass but batarians and turians, even krogans.

‘Wish I’d thought of it first,’ Williams said. ‘So—what’re we running, anyway? Illium sidestreet? The Mars objective?’

‘I was thinking Thessia,’ Shepard replied, the most honest he’d been that night.

‘ _Thessia_?’ Williams snorted. ‘This is _training_ , Shepard, not a date.’

‘Glad you cleared _that_ up,’ Shepard said. He crossed over to the simulation computer, flicking through a few random presets. ‘I thought we’d be dancing around the tension for months—and I wouldn’t want to distract you, Williams.’

‘Ash,’ Williams said. She checked the rifles on the racks, feeling them for heft and shape. ‘Williams makes me think my old man’s in the room, you know?’

Shepard didn’t, but he could play along. He’d figured Kaidan wasn’t the only one who’d come to basic training with a pedigree, but it made him wonder how many of the other recruits were living their families’ legacies—and if so, why so many of them still couldn’t point a damn gun.

At least Williams—Ash—wasn’t like that.

His fingers paused when he came to Thessia, the tranquil garden with its fountain and crawling vines. Humanity had never come into direct conflict with the asari, the informative caption said, but their strength as biotic warriors as well as the unique tactics of the commando forces made the simulation an effective learning tool.

‘And you’re dreaming if you think I’m letting anything distract me,’ Ash added. She trained the rifle Shepard’s way, testing its sights. There weren’t many people he’d trust to point a gun at him, but Ash knew what she was doing.

She wanted to beat him, not up and blow his head off by accident. That’d mean at least two demerits on her permanent record.

‘I don’t know about _that_ , Ash.’ Shepard punched in the program for Thessia, then stepped aside to fetch his Kessler. ‘I’ve been told I can be very charming.’

Ash rolled her eyes, the last thing Shepard saw before she flipped the dark visor on her helmet down.

‘Save it for the asari,’ she said. The lights turned green, and the simulation went live.

*


	4. ALENKO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan and Shepard don't kiss.

No one was more surprised than Kaidan to realize he was actually looking forward to the ritual rule-breaking Shepard had set up for them.

Sneaking into private Alliance property after hours wouldn’t have seemed like a restful experience to most people, but if brain camp had taught Kaidan anything, it was that he _wasn’t_ most people. If he hadn’t learned it on Jump Zero, what he’d been through with Shepard in Vancouver would’ve driven the lesson home.

Soldiers couldn’t hope to be most people, either. Kaidan had learned a lot from Dad in his time, when he was around as much as when he wasn’t, and there were some things—once you’d figured them out—that you couldn’t stop knowing again.

Sneaking out past curfew should’ve been harder than it was. It would’ve been in brain camp. But there was something to be said for a system that trusted the group it was teaching just as much as it rode them hard during on-hours.

It wasn’t about playing by the rules, not after dark.

It was about wanting to be with Shepard.

It was dumb, obviously, but that didn’t stop Kaidan from feeling it all the time, or sliding past the already unlocked door into the simulation room, ready to spot Shepard in the usual place: settled down by a few crates, dog tags glinting in the pale light, one knee bent and one arm resting on it, glancing up at Kaidan from across the distance. Kaidan wondered what it’d be this time—Shepard was tricky and he kept acting like any surprise was a good one, so it could’ve just as easily been a quiet spot on the Citadel as a cage-match on Khar’shan.

He wasn’t expecting the gunfire, sharp rounds flashing bright. The sudden burst of light left him reeling; all his training was a stronger instinct than sore muscles, and he had a kinetic shield up in his best time yet, just as ricochet pinged off a far wall and a holo-image of an asari matriarch dimmed into shadow.

‘That one was _all_ me this time,’ Shepard called from behind natural cover, sounding breathless and crazy and a little bit impressive, deeper than Kaidan remembered—deeper than when they kissed and he got breathless in another way. Sometimes high; sometimes soft. The vein at Kaidan’s temple twitched but he didn’t bring the kinetic barrier down.

‘Two now, huh? It _still_ doesn’t put you ahead of my three,’ Williams called back. They’d taken point on opposite sides of the course and they were hammering hostiles like a well-trained team—or like two idiots who were practicing after hours for no reason other than to show off.

Kaidan wasn’t sure if he should feel sour about it or left out or laugh it off. If his head hadn’t been hurting so much all day—if Anderson _hadn’t_ just pulled Shepard out of training for a private chat, presumably about exactly this kind of behavior—then he might’ve joined them, taking out the VI he saw going for Shepard’s back.

But a split-second decision like that not to act could be the only thing that stood between saving a guy and losing him. The VI zoned in and Williams wasn’t in the right position to see it—so it was up to Kaidan to throw some moves at it, unarmed and still in his fatigues, using the same biotics that’d been kicking his ass all day long.

The VI lifted up in the air, pinwheeling in slow-motion. That was enough to get Williams’s attention—and Shepard’s, too—as they peppered it with shot, finally taking it out.

The hissing of the lights overhead suggested that the training course was over. Kaidan didn’t take a step forward or a step back, but it was never the best way to start a night—by glowing in front of two people who weren’t.

Shepard pulled off his helmet, sweaty and flushed beneath, his Kessler tucked under one arm. His eyes were bright, the bluest Kaidan had ever seen them, and he didn’t think it was just because they were reflecting the biotic glow, which was already fading against Kaidan’s skin.

‘…And _that’s_ why they give us squads of three,’ Kaidan said, maybe sharper than he should’ve been. ‘Because you can’t cover all the angles with just two. Wouldn’t want you to lose face in front of Williams, either, Shepard.’

‘Good thing you showed up and saved me, then,’ Shepard replied. His grin was the real thing, something adrenaline-fueled, something Kaidan couldn’t look at directly.

Maybe, if he’d been feeling better. Maybe, if he hadn’t spent all the energy he had left on defenses he hadn’t needed, to protect him against gunfire he shouldn’t have been seeing.

‘You want in, Alenko?’ Williams asked. ‘I’ve got another round in me, if Shepard’s up to it. Might’ve tired him out already, though. You feeling peaked, Shepard? Ready to turn in?’

‘Like hell,’ Shepard said. He didn’t even have the decency to sound like he was lying about it, either, toughing it out just to impress Williams and whoever else he thought might be watching.

Kaidan knew from experience the secret reserves of Shepard’s strength, how long he could run on less than empty. He just hadn’t thought Alliance training would be drawing on them so often. Gang life _should’ve_ seemed like a far cry from this new one.

You could take the Red out of Tenth Street, Kaidan thought, then shook his head. Shepard hadn’t told him all that stuff just so Kaidan would have something to use against him when he was feeling grumpy.

At least, he didn’t think that was it. It was hard to feel sure of anything with his head pounding and Shepard’s grin in his face, cocky as ever and twisting a scar on his cheek.

They had to be prepared for all kinds of conditions, sure-footed on every terrain the systems would throw at them. But there were internal factors that mattered, too, and fighting through a headache took the same skills as fighting through a sandstorm on Mars.

Kaidan was just the lucky guy who had to do both. It’d make him stronger, better for it in the end—and he knew that, even if he wasn’t grinning all the way through.

‘You guys know you’re gonna be wiped tomorrow, right?’ he asked. He didn’t pick up a pistol, but he didn’t have to. Two weapons specialists meant he’d be going biotic in any training exercise, anyway. Still, the chance to practice his aim might’ve been nice. ‘I could walk away now and kick both your butts first thing tomorrow on a full night’s sleep.’

Shepard laughed, not at him but with him. It felt good. Less good was the look he shared with Williams afterward, like all of a sudden they were buddies, but Kaidan decided to let it slide. Shepard worked better in a pack—even if he seemed determined to beat that lone wolf angle to death.

‘What’d I tell you, Ash?’ Shepard said. ‘You, me and Kaidan—we could run this whole place in a few weeks.’

‘That’s not the Alliance motto,’ Williams said. But Kaidan could tell she was tempted all the same.

No matter who you were or where you landed, it felt good to have a group. There were already little unions springing up in the mess hall and after hours, like finding like and knocking heads with the rest. Maybe they wouldn’t always get paired together in exercises—but forming bonds with the people you fought beside _was_ kind of Alliance protocol.

Trust Shepard to get it right, even if he came at it like ricochet.

Come to think of it, too many of his shots hit because of that. It was a tactic most enemies or targets wouldn’t have the chance to learn about him—already taken down before they had a chance to notice the patterns—but watching him work, Kaidan was starting to get a feel for his style. The way he pretended to yawn sometimes, just so he could stretch an arm around Kaidan’s shoulders while they were sitting next to each other, watching a projection ceiling of stars over Eden Prime. The way he tugged Kaidan close during a vacation to Noveria, using body heat for shared warmth while wall-jets simulated the snowy planet temperatures.

‘You really in?’ Shepard asked.

Kaidan couldn’t trust the expression he wore after that, biting his lower lip, rubbing the sweat off his forehead. It hit him harder than rubber rounds against light armor and he went for a helmet—because he knew the importance of actions, of putting your hard work where your words were.

He was going to regret it in the morning.

Then again, he always did. It was just that the pros outweighed the cons most of the time, Shepard’s hand at the small of his back, or touching him through the fabric of his briefs, getting him off that easy—from nothing more than the promise of skin on skin.

Kaidan’s second adrenaline spike wasn’t just about the upcoming fight, what he had to prove, how he needed his blood pumping. It was about the shape Shepard cut in his training armor, flipping through presets until he found a new one to try.

Once Kaidan slid his visor down, it faded. Only the rush of energy—Kaidan pushed to his limits, then straight past them—was left, as Shepard dropped them back into Mars, a run Kaidan knew twelve different strategies for like the back of his hand.

Williams got the most kills. Shepard came out leading, taking two hits to the chest. With Kaidan providing cover, they took what Williams called the best time the place’d ever seen.

Even if, technically, the place _hadn’t_ seen it.

‘It’s not like we can put it on the books or anything,’ Kaidan said, wiping the sweat and sand out of his damp hair, the grit that’d blown up under his helmet. ‘ _Or_ like we can put in a request to train together, either. It was what it was—that’s all.’

‘But you have to admit,’ Shepard said, leaning back and chugging from a bottle of protein-fortified water he’d brought with him, ‘that was beautiful.’

The way he lingered over the word, watching Kaidan while he said it… Kaidan knew it shouldn’t have felt personal; Williams didn’t even seem to notice it, and nothing made it through her crosshairs without it coming up on her radar. She was sharp like that. She would’ve known if it was something and if she didn’t, it had to mean it wasn’t anything at all.

Kaidan didn’t want it to be nothing, but what he wanted didn’t change the facts. Shepard handed over the bottle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and Kaidan drank before passing it on to Williams.

They’d come a long way from the blue-tinged specialty liquor in _Inferno_. Some people called Alliance training a special kind of hell but it was so much more focused than having nothing to do, nowhere to be, floating between days like you were lost in space somewhere.

It was better. It came with aches and pains and stiff joints and cracked bones, but it was better.

Shepard licked his lips and Kaidan realized he was staring; he looked away, but it was too late for covering it up. Shepard crossed his arms over his chest, which meant he’d noticed—and _that_ meant he was feeling cocky about it. Williams was busy with the protein water but once she lowered the bottle, she was keen enough to figure out _something_ was going on.

‘I should go,’ Kaidan said.

‘Three hours of sleep,’ Williams said, finishing off the last of the water. ‘That’s optimal. It’s all you need and you can even run on less—if you train your body right.’

‘You’ll have to teach me sometime,’ Shepard said.

His cheeks looked sharp, his mouth full. Kaidan wondered, in a flash of poorly thought-out curiosity, how many nights he hadn’t slept at all.

‘You wish,’ Williams said. She looked at Kaidan first, leaving Shepard for last. ‘I need every advantage I can get in this place—you guys are on your own. No offense or anything. I guess you’re all right.’

‘We’re better than all right,’ Shepard said.

When Kaidan snorted, it sounded like they were sharing a joke more than like he was laughing at Shepard. Somehow, he was okay with that.

‘If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be here.’ Williams cracked her right shoulder, then racked her rifle, tucking it in a few back: somewhere it wouldn’t be first one grabbed by a cadet who didn’t know their ass from their aiming scope in the morning.

It was the closest Kaidan had seen her get to sentimental.

‘Same time tomorrow?’ Shepard asked as she left.

‘Make it two days,’ Williams said. She didn’t salute, but Kaidan hadn’t been expecting her to, not for them. ‘Alenko’s right. What’s the use burning thruster fuel if we’re too wiped to kick butt in the morning?’

‘Knew I liked you,’ Kaidan muttered, not so quiet that she wouldn’t hear it.

Shepard didn’t turn around right away when the door hissed shut. He was rubbing the sweat from his head with a gloved hand, flexing his fingers and cracking the knuckles one by one. Kaidan felt tired just looking at him, headache throbbing at his temples now that the adrenaline from their exercise was wearing off.

‘Thessia, huh?’ Kaidan said.

Shepard lifted his hands to his shoulders, feeling between the grooves of his plate armor to get the chestpiece off. ‘I thought it’d be romantic.’

‘Right,’ Kaidan said. ‘And Williams and a team of asari commandos, that was just, what…mood lighting?’

‘Something like that.’ Shepard pulled a face, nose wrinkling when his armor got stuck. Just like that, Kaidan found himself moving to help him.

It was tough not to miss the days when there hadn’t been any more to deal with than leather and whatever thin, crappy t-shirt Shepard had thrown on that morning—or the night before—but Kaidan didn’t mind it as much as he could’ve. Shepard wore the armor well.

They both did.

Kaidan’s fingers hooked into the grooves and slid the pieces apart, easy, something he’d be able to do in his sleep, but it was obvious Shepard didn’t have the reach he needed to get back there and angle himself free. When he was out of the armor, Kaidan setting it aside on the rack, Shepard rolled his shoulder out, and Kaidan recognized the face he was making because he knew what Shepard looked like when he was injured.

After all, it _was_ how they’d met.

Kaidan folded his arms over his chest, easier to do with the light armor he favored than the heavy stuff Shepard liked best, and Shepard rolled his eyes. ‘C’mere,’ he said. ‘Let me get you out of that stuff. Missed you while we were out there kicking Thessia ass. You know the biotic stuff drives me wild, right?’

‘It shouldn’t,’ Kaidan said.

It drove him wild, too, but not for the right reasons.

He stepped closer anyway—and maybe there was strategy in that, to drop his armor so Shepard would shed the rest of his. Not that it was as simple as unbuckling a few Kevlar plates. It never was with Shepard.

‘There we go.’ Shepard’s hands knew what they were doing, not just with pistols and lock codes but with getting Kaidan out of whatever he was wearing. His t-shirt underneath the armor was damp with sweat, skin flushed from exertion, still on cooldown while his head throbbed. Shepard brushed his thumb over Kaidan’s temple, then turned his hand, pressing his knuckle where the vein wouldn’t stop twitching. It wasn’t like medicine or painkillers and it wasn’t actually going to do anything, but Kaidan leaned into the touch all the same, while Shepard brushed a stray lock of hair off his forehead, still warm, still pinched up tight from the day’s focus and concentration. ‘That’s better. Airlock’s not the only thing that needs a routine depressurization once in a while.’

‘If I take your shirt off,’ Kaidan said, ‘what kind of damage am I gonna see under there?’

That was enough to knock Shepard off his game—if only for a few seconds. Sometimes, in the field, that was all it took; every lesson they’d run from day one kept trying to drill that home, like it wasn’t already basic human instinct to buy yourself extra time whenever you could.

Or maybe that was a remainder from brain camp. Kaidan wanted to enjoy the touch on his face for what it was, he really did, smelling of sweat and metal and burnt-out clips, but someone had to mention the bruises Shepard kept collecting like they were medals.

The worst part was, it wouldn’t get him anywhere, not with Alliance. They’d flag him with evaluations like _reckless_ and in the end, one mistake was all it took.

Kaidan’s throat tightened. When he frowned, it made the headache worse.

Shepard sighed. He grinned around it but it wasn’t the friendly one, cocking his head at a hard angle and shielding up quicker than the Thessian hostile VIs.

‘Nothing I haven’t seen before,’ he said. ‘No broken ribs, if that’s what you’re asking. Think I’m even up for a little more exercise tonight, Kaidan, so…’

Kaidan reached for Shepard’s t-shirt. For the first time, Shepard almost flinched, but he didn’t pull away, and Kaidan found himself with a handful of sweaty fabric, knuckles bunched against the tight muscle beneath.

‘Trust me,’ Shepard added. ‘I’ve seen a lot worse. Bruises are bruises, Kaidan. In fact, the most I’ve been marked up here was that time _you_ bit me.’

Some of the real grin returned—and some of the good heat, flashing in Shepard’s eyes and finding an answer in Kaidan’s stomach. It was the same kind of blood-deep hunger that went along with burning too many calories during a biotic spike and it was just as unpredictable; Kaidan had no way of calculating how much he’d need before he was satisfied. _If_ he was _ever_ satisfied.

Shepard didn’t exactly encourage satisfaction. And he knew it, and he enjoyed it, and he wasn’t the only one who went wild sometimes—only Kaidan didn’t know how to say it so easily.

‘Wouldn’t mind if you took my shirt off, though,’ Shepard said. ‘Give me two seconds, I’ll even dim the lights.’

‘Romantic,’ Kaidan said. ‘No—I don’t want the lights off. I want to see you.’

‘Kinky,’ Shepard said. ‘I didn’t know you were into that shit, Kaidan.’

Whatever he was, it was careful first, neatly dodging Kaidan’s rounds the way he couldn’t seem to dodge the rubber bullets in practice. That meant he _could_ do it, he just… Didn’t. Anyone else might not have even noticed something like that, but Kaidan paid attention to those things, enough to duck Shepard’s flirtations: the cocky sway of his hips or the look in his eyes when he said Kaidan’s name.

Well, enough to duck _most_ of them.

‘Very funny,’ Kaidan said.

‘Damn.’ Shepard shrugged his shoulders up as Kaidan helped him off with his shirt, neither assisting nor fighting it that hard. ‘I was going for sexy.’

Kaidan’s laugh turned into a hiss, the sound caught short and sharp when sweaty cotton gave way to Shepard’s stomach and chest.

He wasn’t just the skinny kid Kaidan had first met in _Inferno_ ; not anymore. There was a heft to his shoulders that hadn’t been present back then, solid muscle filling out the hollows between his ribs and under his sternum. But Kaidan couldn’t bring himself to blindly appreciate the changes without accepting _all_ of them—because there were yellowing bruises like coffee stains ringing Shepard’s left side from an exercise they’d done with turian assault rifle rounds a week or so back, and the fresher injuries were clustered higher on his chest, dark purple ballistic marks that were too big to fit in with the freckles naturally dotting Shepard’s skin.

‘You know,’ Kaidan said, before his better judgment could stop him, ‘most people are happy to walk away with a medal for bravery.’

‘Nah—medals last too long.’ Shepard flexed his arm, working out a stiff muscle. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to polish these.’

‘Shepard,’ Kaidan said. He was glad he’d taken off his gloves so he could feel Shepard’s warmth even as it fled from the thin fabric of his standard-issue shirt. It was better quality than anything he’d owned back home, but Shepard had a way of making his mark—it didn’t seem at all the same as the clothes Kaidan wore day in and day out. Still, when it was in his hands, it was just a bunch of fabric in the end, something each of them wore. It wasn’t personal, just one of the illusions that Shepard lived in.

And Kaidan, too, he guessed. By extension or proximity or…whatever.

You could get pulled into that kind of gravity, and if you never worked up the right momentum, you might not be able to pull out of it again. You might start thinking you didn’t want to, that staying there orbiting someone else was an option. A good one.

Kaidan was twenty. He’d seen a lot already. And he was old enough to get that he didn’t actually know so much of what he should, or most of what he wanted. He had Shepard’s sweaty t-shirt in one hand and Shepard’s chest in front of him, muscles starting to fill out after regular meals, a body taking shape somewhere out of sight, underneath the armor he suited into and—sometimes—had trouble shaking off.

But with bruises like the ones he was sporting, it wasn’t surprising he’d want to keep that armor on.

‘Is this what it was like?’ Kaidan asked. ‘In the Reds, I mean. Were you always going to bed…like this?’

‘ _Like this_?’ Shepard paused with his hand at the back of his neck, leveling Kaidan with a look that felt like a sniper’s red laser scouting its target. ‘Yeah, Kaidan, I was. Bruised’s better than bloody, though—or broken. Most of the time I don’t even notice it.’

‘You’re just saying that,’ Kaidan said. ‘The whole tough-guy thing, right?’

Shepard shrugged. He didn’t wince, but Kaidan knew when he was showing off and this was it, classic Shepard behavior, the times when even Kaidan forgot he had a first name—and not because of the training, the way things worked on Alliance roll call, either. It wasn’t a soldier thing. It was a _Shepard_ thing, and Kaidan could kiss him or touch him or dream about him all he liked and still not understand a second of it, beyond the frustration of trying, or wanting to, or wanting him.

‘If this is romance, then it doesn’t really work for us—you know that?’ Shepard asked.

‘Yeah, I’m starting to get it,’ Kaidan replied.

Shepard took a step closer. There was that gravity problem, Kaidan thought; the worst part was knowing Shepard wanted to kiss him, how badly he wanted Shepard to kiss him, and also knowing neither one of them was getting up the right momentum for it.

It wasn’t going to happen. Not tonight.

‘…Yeah,’ Shepard said. He took his shirt back, their fingers brushing for less than a second before he tugged it back on, head disappearing under the collar. ‘You should get some sleep. Circles under your eyes—now _those_ are bruises.’

When he moved past Kaidan, there was an answering tug deep in Kaidan’s belly, about so much more than the extra exercise.

He went to bed that night hungry for too many reasons, sleep as restless as it used to be back on Jump Zero.

*


	5. SHEPARD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard tries to ask Kaidan out.

‘Blowing it’ used to be about life or death situations, not whether or not Shepard bagged himself a kiss goodnight. Maybe it was time to go back to those standards for getting through the day, because ‘blowing it’ still wasn’t something Shepard went in for.

Bruised was better than bloody or broken, like he said. And aside from the scar on his forehead, there wasn’t anything else he wore the same way.

There’d been a time when having food this regular was all he’d wanted—or all he told himself he did. He didn’t have to go to bed hungry, so he’d pretty much already landed among the stars.

Shepard leaned back against the wall, the dorm room quiet, and not that deceptive too-quiet kind of silence, either, with shit ready to happen in every shadow. People were just sleeping. Some of ‘em were even snoring, giving away positions in the night without a second thought.

It was cozy. It would’ve been cozier there with Kaidan up against his side, one arm thrown over his waist, cheek on Shepard’s shoulder. He’d shift and Shepard wouldn’t feel the bruises at all, just the weight of somebody keeping him warm.

Shepard rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. Sure, his body was aching. But it was the good stuff, the stuff that told him he was alive. He still had excess energy, the promise of something he wanted but wasn’t gonna get.

He flipped the omni-tool on, dim glow bright enough he had to hunch over it to cover it up. Jenkins in the bunk next to him was a light sleeper. Probably a lightweight, too, from the looks of him—but then, who wasn’t?

Most of the guys in the place didn’t know what it meant to be _really_ wiped at the end of a long day—so tired your eyes were closing before you even hit your bunk. Basic training took it out of everyone, but Shepard was used to running on less than three nights’ worth of sleep a week. Shut-eye was a prime opening for one of the other gangs to move in on your stuff behind your back. Not getting any at _all_ could find you with one between the eyes just as quick, but Shepard had it worked out. It was a balanced system—and it worked.

Maybe one day he’d get so a day’s action tired him out enough to snore through the night like Jenkins, but it hadn’t happened yet. He was still that sharp.

His omni-tool flashed with the reminder he had messages waiting for him, and Shepard curled himself around it tighter. It was long past the time any of the staff sergeants would be making their rounds, but even worse than getting busted and reprimanded in Shepard’s eyes would’ve been answering questions from a nosy cadet who wanted to know what was up.

He’d fight shoulder to shoulder with them in the morning—but that didn’t mean he owed them anything else. His private business was exactly that.

 _HAVEN’T HEARD FROM WEISMAN_ was the title of the first message and a quick scan of his inbox told Shepard that they were all centered around the same topic. Apparently, Finch had sent one of their guys on what should’ve been a basic weapons deal, smuggling Earth goods for some turians off-world—only he’d never come back.

Shepard sighed, settling onto his belly when his arm started to cramp and yanking the covers over his head to shield the glow. He’d tried to set up a meeting between Finch and Aria T’Loak before he’d enlisted, at least get the Reds in with _someone_ who had a head on her shoulders now that Shepard wasn’t gonna be around to fill those boots, but apparently it hadn’t gone well. She was long gone from the Sol system now anyway, and Shepard respected that.

He didn’t know Weisman well—just enough to decide he didn’t _want_ to know him any better than he already did. During the one and only job they’d pulled together, he hadn’t shut up about the First Contact war, and almost started a fight with the turian contact Shepard had been working on softening up for months.

Knowing he was an asshole made it hard to get too worked up about his disappearance.

Now Shepard was the one with the headache, no one around to rub it for him, just the memory of Kaidan’s hands against his chest when he pulled the t-shirt up over his head. They’d come so damn close—but close wasn’t good enough, not in Shepard’s line of work, not for the Alliance, and not for getting off-world. Not for the Reds, either, but they weren’t Shepard’s guys anymore.

Jenkins snoring away was more one of his than Finch or Weisman or the rest and that was how it had to be.

 _WORK IT OUT_ , Shepard punched in. He almost sent it like that, then added, _YOU’VE GOT THIS._

He knew better than anyone what the Reds were capable of when they were backed into a corner. And Finch knew the same thing, which was why he’d be all right.

It wasn’t perfect, as far from neat as a thing could be, but Shepard’s life wasn’t tied up pretty with a bow and he wasn’t looking for it to be any less complicated. Tough told a better story, anyway.

In the morning, he stashed the omni-tool under his bed and ran a few courses; his legs were tired from training with Ash the night before but they kept pace with each other, giving as good as they got. Shepard was starving by zero eight hundred, eating more than Kaidan after special biotics training on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and Ash was a close second, scarfing her proteins the same way Finch would’ve. Maybe her manners were even worse, and Shepard didn’t feel the need to wipe his mouth, either.

There was rhythm to the day, predictability. And he was the only guy in the place who knew how to get the better end of a frag grenade, the only one who volunteered for that game of hot potato, carrying the damn thing to safety before it went off.

‘That was a close call, Shepard,’ Anderson said as Shepard pulled off his helmet, sweat pouring down the small of his back.

‘Somebody had to do it, sir,’ Shepard replied.

He almost thought he could see something like approval in Anderson’s expression, but it was probably just a trick of the light.

‘ _Damn_ it,’ Ash said. ‘That one should’ve been mine, Shepard, and you know it.’

‘Should’ve been, could’ve been, would’ve been,’ Shepard told her, and Ash clocked him on the shoulder, almost hard enough to throw it out of joint.

It wasn’t a bad day. Shepard bumped into Kaidan in the hallway once and they didn’t lock eyes, neither of them turning around, the fist to their gut quieter than the ping of rubber rounds against Kevlar. It wasn’t a bruise so much as it was an ache, which didn’t factor into Shepard’s hierarchy of injuries—but it still hurt all the same.

‘How do you and Alenko know each other, anyway?’ Ash asked, bracing herself for impact during hand-to-hand combat practice. It was the one place where Shepard’s skills weren’t appreciated by anyone—because even when he got his sparring partner down on their back, he didn’t do it by regular means, with any of the basic moves they were supposed to be learning. Rich soldier kids who’d inherited their camp placement didn’t appreciate getting their ankles kicked out from underneath them and going down because someone else was smarter and quicker than they were, not stronger. Shepard had been docked more times than he could count on the fingers of both hands for playing outside the rules—like anyone else out there in the Sol system or beyond would play by the rules once they were stationed somewhere.

Alliance brass could stand to learn a thing or two from him.

‘Our parents were best friends,’ Shepard replied. ‘Went to all the fancy Vancouver parties together. High society, you know how it is.’

‘Like hell.’ Ash blocked one of Shepard’s elbow punches and Shepard felt it all the way through his arm to the center of his chest.

‘We ran in the same street gang together,’ he said. ‘Kaidan was the shill and I was the muscle.’ 

‘Fine. Don’t tell me. I get it; you’re not big on fraternization.’ Ash didn’t miss a beat, countering two of Shepard’s jabs with an uppercut that almost connected, knuckles grazing Shepard’s jaw as he twisted to slide away. ‘As though a guy like _Alenko_ would do anything like _that_.’

She had no idea. It made Shepard feel better and worse to know Kaidan more than anyone else here—and less than he wanted to.

It also sucked that he couldn’t watch him from the peripheries in hand-to-hand. While all the good little soldiers in training hit the mats to learn how to disable an opponent without a weapon, the biotics specialists went off to do their thing. Judging by what Shepard had already seen, they were probably working in some kind of underground bunker where they couldn’t blow the compound to shreds.

It was almost enough to make a guy wish he’d been the one to get brain-wave powers at birth, though Kaidan’s headaches and the scar at the base of his skull were enough to give even Shepard pause.

Nothing came without a price. Not even to the rich kids who could afford it.

‘Anyway,’ Ash said, on the defensive as Shepard leaned into his swing, ‘we’ve got shore leave coming up. Even if you want to be cagey as a salarian ambassador, I thought we could explore the station together—you, me and Alenko. Maybe learn something.’

Try as he might, Shepard couldn’t get her angle. Of course, that could’ve been because he was using half his brain to dodge—Ash never stayed on defense for long. She also didn’t seem like the type who’d take no for an answer, even if he’d kind of been planning on a take two with Kaidan.

If Thessia didn’t work, maybe they could catch a Blasto movie. That always put Shepard in the mood.

Then again, slipping out of arrangements was Shepard’s specialty. In the Reds it was easier to agree to a contact’s face then turn around and run with a better idea later. Less fuss, less muss, and it only _sometimes_ ended in Shepard’s broken ribs.

He didn’t trust Ash to go any easier on him in hand-to-hand if she caught him ditching her to make time with Kaidan, but he’d always been quick on his feet—and his mouth was even quicker than that.

Ash caught him high next to his eye, Shepard’s block coming a second too late. It made his cheekbone ring with a sharp crack, but when he dropped low and grabbed her by the ankle, she went down all the same.

Shepard had enough time to think she was too solid for his old line of work—that he’d been all wrong about pegging her as an asset, wishing they’d had time to run together for the Reds—before she put an elbow in his chest between the ribs, winding him _and_ landing a lucky blow on one of the old bruises.

She had Shepard pinned a second later through a combination of pain he couldn’t shrug off and speed he couldn’t deny, and it was only the orders barked by their training officer to get back into form that kept her from doing anything more. When she offered a hand to Shepard to help him up, he took it, then regretted it when she nearly wrenched his elbow out of the socket pulling him back to his feet.

That made them four to two that day, with Ash finally pulling out in front. They’d been even since they wiped the slates clean that morning, resetting the boards every twenty-four hours, but Shepard still had the rest of the afternoon to make up the difference and then some. Once he got desperate, it was all over.

It was one of those tricks of the trade Finch still hadn’t picked up on. Jenkins hadn’t, either. It happened to all kinds. 

‘One of these days, you’re gonna have to teach me your special moves,’ Ash said.

The thing was, Shepard probably could.

‘Maybe if you’re good,’ he replied, and swung in fast, giving no quarter.

They were four to three at the end of the round, Shepard’s cheek throbbing, Ash nursing her jaw. Shepard headed into the lockers to change and shrugged a couple of the guys off when they started talking about the show, about him and Ash, whatever it was they were saying.

‘Looking pretty cozy on those mats together, Shepard,’ Tanaka said with a whistle.

‘Looking pretty cozy over there with Jenkins, Tanaka,’ Shepard replied, throwing Jenkins a wink.

He needed a shower. He needed some medigel for his ribs. He needed Tanaka to realize he was beat when it came to mouthing off and quit trying. But he was preoccupied, thinking about shore leave, thinking about Kaidan. Thinking about how you asked somebody to a Blasto movie on your free time when you’d already had your hand down his fatigues, opening up his fly, kissing his dick through his briefs. Maybe it wasn’t necessary anymore; they’d shot past that stage into something else. Maybe they’d burned all their fuel up and now it was burned out, only Shepard’s belly kept burning whenever he thought about Kaidan next to him in the simulation room, the soft sounds he made while he was trying to keep quiet.

Whenever Shepard thought about kissing his mouth, swallowing those noises, feeling Kaidan’s skin tremble and jump, it hurt more than all the turian rifle rounds the galaxy could throw at him. He rolled out his shoulder, still working despite Ash’s best attempts, then headed off to catch Kaidan in the hall.

Knowing a guy’s schedule was the way to orchestrate a few chance meetings whenever you needed ‘em. They’d left enough up to luck already; now, Shepard had to help luck along, and with the two of them on each other’s side, what could go wrong?

‘Alenko,’ he said, bumping shoulders on his way by. ‘Hey, what’re the odds?’

Kaidan looked up. Shepard had such a damn thing for his eyes and he liked it when his hair was out of place, even if it was all he could do not to brush it off Kaidan’s forehead right there in front of everybody.

‘Hey, Shepard,’ Kaidan said. ‘Something up?’

He meant the fresh bruise on Shepard’s cheek, which Shepard touched instead of Kaidan’s hair, giving himself something else to do with his hands. ‘Sparring with Ash is like tussling with a krogan head-on,’ Shepard said. ‘Walk you to your next session?’

‘And make you late for yours,’ Kaidan replied, mouth going all twisty on him.

‘I’m using to making up lost time.’ Shepard fell into line at Kaidan’s side, coming in close when a group of cadets passed in the other direction. He’d been hoping for an excuse like that, and he almost thought he could feel Kaidan’s shoulders stiffen—in the good way, not the bad one. ‘I was just wondering what you had planned for shore leave. Figured you’d be letting your mom spoil you for a while or something, but in case you get sick of pudding…’

‘You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?’ Kaidan asked.

‘Don’t see that I can,’ Shepard said.

‘I’m going to get her for that one day,’ Kaidan said, in a tone of voice that meant he knew he never would. Mrs. Alenko already had him beat in all the areas that mattered and Shepard didn’t envy Kaidan his choice of opponents.

Just then, he was more focused on trying to get a straight answer out of the guy.

‘So,’ Shepard prompted. ‘Shore leave.’

‘Yeah.’ The reminder made Kaidan touch his hair, running his palm over one side of his head and behind his ear, checking to make sure everything was in order, regulation and ship-shape. It probably said something about him that he hadn’t shaved it all off like so many of the other first-year recruits. Shepard didn’t know what that something was yet, but he liked it all the same. Kaidan was different. They could have that in common, if nothing else. ‘Well… My dad always said Arcturus Station was the hub for the Alliance military. There’s bound to be some interesting stuff outside the training barracks.’

‘Exactly what I was thinking,’ Shepard said. ‘You know me: I love to know what’s interesting.’

Kaidan’s mouth did that twisty thing again. Shepard thought about kissing it until his lips softened, right there in the middle of the hallway. Then he had to sidestep a group of gossiping adepts and he missed his chance. The moment was over.

His timing was usually better than that. Something had him thrown, and he couldn’t blame the bruises for it.

‘I don’t really think it’s gonna be _Vancouver_ interesting, though,’ Kaidan said.

There was a heat in the way he said it—like Vancouver was something they shared instead of a city Kaidan grew up in, one Shepard had stumbled into by accident. No one but them knew they might as well have been living on different sides of the country with how far East Hastings felt from Kaidan’s place by English Bay.

Shepard slung an arm around Kaidan’s shoulders, pulling him close before he released him, coming up short in front of his next class.

‘Vancouver was interesting because it had _us_ in it,’ he said, grinning big the way he only ever did for Kaidan. ‘You know that—just like you know you want to say yes before I really _am_ late and Anderson court-martials me for it.’

‘Say yes to what?’ Kaidan had that poker face going for him, something all-natural; Shepard recognized it from _Inferno_ when they almost pulled off the red sand bust. It must’ve worked out after the smoke had cleared, because Aria hadn’t come after Shepard herself. And a lot of that success had to do with Kaidan’s performance on the night of, although in the clean light of Alliance property, Shepard was looking too hard at his face, not hard enough at everything else on the periphery. ‘You know you didn’t actually ask me anything… Right, Shepard?’

So he was playing hard to get. After Shepard had come back for him and everything. There wasn’t anybody anywhere Shepard would let get away with that kind of attitude—and Kaidan had a way of making it seem so simple, even if Shepard knew it wasn’t innocent.

There wasn’t anybody anywhere—except for Kaidan.

Shepard played it cool, shrugging it off, rubbing the freshly shaved line of hair at the back of his neck. ‘Didn’t I?’ he asked. ‘Could’ve sworn you were better at reading between the lines than _that_ , Kaidan.’

‘You’re a difficult guy to read,’ Kaidan said.

‘And I’d like to keep it that way.’ Shepard dropped his hand. If this’d been anywhere else, he would’ve rubbed Kaidan’s hip with it, but the backdrop was throwing him. If only his life came with a simulation switch, he could’ve given them the privacy they needed, for just long enough to make that connection. ‘This is _my_ payback for the pudding thing, isn’t it?’

The corner of Kaidan’s mouth twitched. ‘I don’t know. Is it?’

It definitely was. Shepard had to kiss him for it—but later. If he got the chance. On shore leave, which _was_ their chance.

Shepard needed a wall to lean against. He tried to maneuver it, but miscalculated the distance. Kaidan might not have been tracking his progress with a datapad, but Shepard still didn’t want that blunder going down for posterity.

‘There’s a new Blasto movie out and I’m going,’ he said, recovering fast. ‘You should come along—if you want. Maybe the action’s not your thing, but you know I could make it worth the price of admission.’

It hadn’t come out the way Shepard had planned it. Something definitely had him off his game, the look in Kaidan’s eyes too dark to read, while Shepard felt like he’d just been punted into an anti-gravity situation—thrown out of an airlock to float in deep space until somebody came through to rescue him. Unless they chose to leave him floating there, which, given his performance, he probably deserved.

‘Tempting, right?’ Shepard added, desperate in a way he never got when even his life was on the line. This was more important than that; it’d go up hotter than a frag grenade if Shepard didn’t cross the finish line with it fast enough. ‘You’re speechless. I get it. Don’t strain yourself.’

‘The action’s my thing,’ Kaidan said, not speechless at all. ‘And I like the Blasto movies just fine.’

‘Cool,’ Shepard said.

‘Cool,’ Kaidan repeated.

 _Get out before you blow the deal_ , Shepard thought. It was the first piece of advice he’d ever given Finch and he’d always been able to follow it up until recently. ‘Don’t be late,’ he said, and it was only when he’d turned the corner that he realized Kaidan hadn’t actually said _yes_ at all.

*


	6. ALENKO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard's dating skills are suspect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay! Finally seeing the Avengers + AO3 being a bit slow. Never again!

Shepard was acting weird.

He was always acting weird—if weird was ‘not like anybody else Kaidan had ever met’—but his style was usually more predictable, less off-balance. Crazy, but Kaidan could respect it. He’d seen what it could do under pressure, how fast and bright it was.

Maybe he wasn’t eating enough. Maybe all those late-night practice sessions with Williams were taking their toll on him. Everyone had to sleep sometime, even Shepard—although Kaidan didn’t know when it was he _did_ sleep.

Or Anderson was riding him too hard, or some of the other recruits were giving him crap because that was how the pecking order went, or the bruises were bothering him. They had to be bothering him. One was as big as Kaidan’s fist and he clenched it whenever he thought about it, blooming across Shepard’s skin, hiding the freckles Kaidan had kissed.

When he thought about _that_ , he cut himself shaving, just a small nick under his jaw. It stopped bleeding pretty much right away, but he’d know it was there for the rest of the day, prickling whenever he started to sweat.

There was a lot of sweating going down on Arcturus Station. Between Shepard and the drill sergeants, Captain Tiller and Ashley Williams determined to dog his steps until he keeled over and died, Kaidan had never felt so pinned down. It wasn’t the same as being cornered and because of that it wasn’t like being on Jump Zero, but it was still pressure.

Shepard had to feel it too—even if he never showed it.

Shore leave had been a long time coming as far as Kaidan was concerned. Older, better-trained students always got the best rotations—they wanted the greenhorns to get settled into a real routine before cutting them loose to freewheel around the station. Kaidan understood the focus behind their training, but it felt like forever since he had the chance to do _anything_ without someone shouting at him about how he could do it better, or faster, or more efficiently.

He was more than ready to leave behind a world of juiceboxes and prepared proteins for just long enough to appreciate it again.

Of course, seeing the new Blasto movie hadn’t been top on his list of things to do. There were some good restaurants around and a docking bay with a few of the most famous old ships in the naval fleet. Kaidan didn’t daydream about shore leave much, but it’d crossed his mind that he might look for Admiral Hackett or stop by the new Fishdog Food Factory Jenkins had been buzzing about.

The only catch was that Shepard’s idea of entertainment didn’t seem to include Tummy Tingling Tuchanka Sauce.

Kaidan rubbed his jaw, regretting it when the cut started stinging again, just to remind him it was still there.

He wasn’t going to wait for Shepard out front in the shadow of the Jon Grissom statue they’d erected first thing after building the station. But Shepard was already there, chatting with a few other recruits Kaidan didn’t know by name. One of them was laughing and the other looked ready to sock Shepard one right in the jaw—and somehow neither reaction managed to seem that out of place, not even together like that.

It was who Shepard was. People had that strong reaction to him, pulled in close, and Kaidan knew that because he was far from being immune to it. Already he was walking over, Shepard’s gravity doing its regular number, only when Shepard looked up at him it almost made everything worthwhile.

Then, just as easy, Shepard looked away.

‘But you really got me that time, Tanaka,’ Shepard said, clapping the guy on the shoulder. ‘You’re just too fast for me. Make sure you don’t pull those moves outside of a controlled system, all right?’

‘Making friends, huh?’ Kaidan asked.

Shepard slung his arm over Kaidan’s shoulders again—friendly, Kaidan thought, which was exactly what it’d look like to everyone else, while to them, it meant something more. There was no denying the heat of Shepard’s body, especially without any armor to stand between them, only standard issue fatigues that Shepard had undone at the collar.

He looked just like the rest of the recruits and nothing like the rest of the recruits at the same time, and Kaidan could see his bare throat when he swallowed.

‘Glad you could make it, Alenko,’ Shepard said, looking somewhere else while he steered them away.

He was no pilot, though. And Kaidan knew better than to get into a situation where somebody who didn’t know what they were doing was behind the dash.

The problem was trusting Shepard as much as he did—or the problem was questioning _why_ he trusted him so much. Obviously, the skills weren’t an issue. It was the attitude or…something, knowing how jumbled Kaidan’s thoughts got, how Shepard was worse than a headache for letting Kaidan think straight. He had a system for filtering out pain but nothing in place yet to deal with desire.

‘I was thinking maybe we could check out where the SSV Aconcagua was built, too,’ Shepard added, casual as ever, still not meeting Kaidan’s eyes. Kaidan remembered the way he’d been with those model ships—and the first time they’d stepped off onto Arcturus Station, the Academy in the distance, lifting his head toward the tall buildings with too much daylight on his face to read his expression. ‘I mean, if we have the time. If you don’t want to see the Blasto movie again first thing after the credits.’

‘I…don’t really think that’s going to happen,’ Kaidan said.

‘You’re gonna love it. Trust me.’ Shepard’s pace was easy and Kaidan thought about the bruises underneath his camouflage, the guy he was when he pulled the visor on his helmet down. There was just no way to put those two guys together and come up with something that made sense, one soldier who stood a little taller than the rest.

Kaidan was going to get a headache—and ruin his shore leave—if he kept forcing himself to try.

He shook his head in an attempt to let it go, Shepard’s arm heavy on his shoulders when they finally loosened up. If Shepard noticed it, he didn’t say a thing, playing it close to the chest, as always. 

It was a day for sight-seeing, if the crowds were anything to go by. But Shepard took them past a few shortcuts, out of the way of most of the tourists, keeping his head down like they weren’t both green. 

As dates went… It actually wasn’t the weirdest one Kaidan had ever been on. And it hadn’t been set up by his mom, either, so he was getting somewhere. Growing as a person, just like Shepard was growing into his body and into his face.

Shepard caught Kaidan staring at him before Kaidan realized he was doing it. There wasn’t any blushing but they both looked away all the same, Shepard clearing his throat on a grin.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Shepard said. ‘You can look all you want. You can do more than look.’

‘And I thought you were all pumped up for Blasto,’ Kaidan replied.

‘Who _wouldn’t_ be?’ Shepard asked.

Kaidan could name at least ten people off the top of his head, but this wasn’t training. This was their off-time, and he didn’t have to prove anything—even if the idea of being on a date with Shepard had him on guard about as much as he was with hostile VIs. Maybe there wasn’t any reason for him to be that uptight. Maybe he just had to accept it for what it was and quit—what was it Shepard had said?—reading between the lines.

‘You know, Ash wanted to come with us,’ Shepard said. It was off the cuff, muffled by his shoulder as he craned his head after some family, the happy kid flying a model Aconcagua along in his hand, complete with thruster engine noises and everything. ‘See the sights, intimidate some locals, that kind of thing.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Kaidan thought about slipping his hand into Shepard’s back pocket, just sliding in easy like it belonged there. It would’ve made him feel less unbalanced, like he was a part of something instead of being dragged along against his will.

They were all gonna be stuck on this station with the same people for a long time, though. He wasn’t sure he was ready to give up what few shreds of privacy he’d managed to hold onto after enlisting.

Soldiers-in-training gossiped worse than information brokers. At least, that was what Dad always liked to say.

‘It’s true,’ Shepard said. ‘We’re a team now, regulation or not. But I told her I had special plans—kind of. We can still hook up with her later if you want.’

He shielded his eyes with his free hand, staring into the crisp station lights. There were signs painted on the walls in bright neon, pointing travelers to the shipyards or the commons, the parliament or the barracks. They’d only seen a fraction of the station—the same fraction they’d been confined to for training purposes—but it made the hairs on Kaidan’s forearms stand up to realize how big it actually was.

They’d been living here the whole time and there were all these parts of it he knew nothing about. It might as well have been an alien world with how far it felt from Vancouver, how little it felt like home.

Kaidan tried and failed not to watch Shepard out of the corner of his eye. It was tough not to wonder whether he had some space station secrets of his own, hidden levels with directions in blinking lights that Kaidan had somehow failed to read.

‘Special plans,’ Kaidan repeated. One of these days, he was gonna be able to do better than echo Shepard’s words back at him like a short-frame vid.

‘That’s right,’ Shepard said. ‘Some people call it a date, pudding.’

Kaidan elbowed Shepard in the side and Shepard said _oof_ , but only because Kaidan had remembered too late where the worst of his bruises were.

‘You deserved that, though.’ Kaidan touched the area, lower than the ribs he’d fixed up, with nothing more lasting or healing than his fingertips. ‘…You okay?’

‘Takes more than that to take me down,’ Shepard said. When he glanced at Kaidan their eyes were at the same height; Kaidan didn’t know when Shepard had grown and he couldn’t say why he liked it so much, only that he did. He stopped breathing, Shepard’s lips parted, and as big as the station was, Kaidan couldn’t feel it anymore. The stuff that mattered was barely more than a few square feet wide. He bumped boots with Shepard when they stood toe to toe and Shepard straightened his shoulders like he was taking some regulations to heart.

But he couldn’t try them on and shuck them off whenever he wanted. It was a lifestyle now, not a hobby or a habit. Kaidan curled his fingers in toward his palm, patting Shepard’s side with his knuckles.

‘Shouldn’t miss the showing,’ he said, throat tight.

‘Blasto,’ Shepard agreed. He coughed, once, blinking up at the silver arc of the closed-system dome overhead.

Like it was the only word he could think of, the only one he could get out.

‘Right,’ Kaidan said.

‘Right.’ Shepard coughed again. There was too much repetition going on and Kaidan was the one leading the way this time, stopping in front of one of the signboards to get a bead on where they were headed, Shepard bringing up the rear for once instead of blazing the way out in front. Kaidan thought about turning around to see if Shepard was watching him—watching him like he had back in Vancouver, back in _Inferno_ , making Kaidan hot under the collar and hotter under the belt—but for some things, it was better to live with the illusion of possibility instead of the knowledge that put an end to it.

‘So…we want level three, I guess.’ When Kaidan did turn, Shepard had his hands hooked in his pockets, sleeves rolled up far enough to show off a few old cuts and a few fresh scrapes. He wore them like he wore his dog-tags, Kaidan thought, then told himself it was time to stop being so astute about one thing, so dense about everything else. ‘Unless you want to grab something to eat first.’

‘Hungry?’ Shepard asked, licking his bottom lip.

The truth was, Kaidan was always hungry. Biotic sessions were burning up calories faster than he could take them in and that was why biotic recruits got bigger portions and more scheduled mealtimes than the rest of the class.

‘Got you excited with all that talk of pudding, didn’t I?’ Shepard added. He dodged before Kaidan could move after him; when he laughed, it set Kaidan’s nerves at ease. ‘okay. Let’s do it, Kaidan.’

He even made it sound easy. Kaidan stepped closer and Shepard didn’t veer away. It was a good feeling, simple and honest, just not all the way clean. It had all the growing pains of keeping a secret, but Kaidan didn’t mind it as much as he should’ve.

That was the whole problem—and the best part about it at the same time.

They’d stopped to check out the merch at one of the gift shops—the model Aconcaguas were on sale and Shepard had a light in his eyes while he checked out the display, even pushing one of the buttons to get it to flash its lights—when Kaidan realized things weren’t going as bad as he’d half expected them to. They were still awkward and Shepard was still more obvious about his feelings for a dreadnought than he was about anything else, but the afternoon was going well. Nobody’d blown it wide open yet and Kaidan even thought about buying the thing as a souvenir before he realized how crazy that sounded.

‘Think I could get a discount?’ Shepard asked, holding the ship up.

‘Is that a five-fingered one or something legitimate?’ Kaidan replied, and Shepard grinned before he put it back down.

‘Don’t pull any punches or anything, Kaidan,’ he said. ‘You’re a sharper shot than a renegade turian sometimes.’

‘Well,’ Kaidan said, ‘I _have_ been training.’ 

Shepard shook his head, the movement tight like he was shaking off a tail. They knew each other better than for Kaidan to assume he’d taken it personally—that was just what they did, how they got under each other’s skin when they couldn’t get under each other’s clothes. Shepard had his arsenal of nicknames and middle names, ammunition handed to him by Kaidan’s own mother.

As for Kaidan… He had to make do where he could.

‘No room for a collection here, anyway,’ Shepard said. One of his shoulders twitched higher than the other when he shrugged, and Kaidan wished he’d thought to get an arm around them first.

Maybe next time, he thought, before he caught himself planning a next time and shot that notion clean out of the sky. If he got ahead of himself, he wouldn’t thank himself for it later. And there was a difference between trusting a guy on the field and living without him once you were off.

‘The real thing’s probably more exciting,’ Kaidan said. There were no drills on how to find the right cover for your ass when things took an awkward turn mid-conversation. Imagining Anderson frowning down at him wasn’t doing wonders for Kaidan’s self-esteem at the moment, either. ‘Less plastic—and no little parts falling off.’

‘Not if you listen to turian opinion of human construction.’ Shepard bumped his hip against Kaidan’s and threw him a wink, but there was still something hard in the line of his jaw and his eyes wouldn’t soften, focusing somewhere over Kaidan’s head or outside his understanding.

Kaidan was working his way up to asking about it when Shepard distracted him again, sniffing the air with a sharp lunge that pulled them both forward through the crowd.

‘There we go,’ Shepard said.

A brightly-colored sign proclaimed that they were only a corner’s turn away from the famous Fishdog Food Factory, which Kaidan could have figured out by the smell—or, better yet, the dancing mascot.

‘Is that—a guy in a varren suit?’ Kaidan asked, letting his mouth run away with him.

‘I sure hope so,’ Shepard said. ‘Otherwise we’re living in a world where they can teach varren the salarian shuffle, and I’m not so sure I like that, Kaidan.’

It seemed like as good a time as any to laugh, maybe break up some of the tension. Kaidan did, while Shepard side-stepped the mascot.

His timing was off—and it wasn’t because of the music. Kaidan already knew what Shepard looked like on the dance floor and how well he could move as long as he wasn’t trying to pull off the salarian shuffle, himself. He was better than this, hand shoved in his pocket to see how many credits he had for a fishdog, eyes narrower than the scar cutting across his scalp.

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said. Something was up.

‘Hey yourself,’ Shepard replied. ‘I thought you were hungry, Kaidan. All these mixed signals—and I thought they training us out of that so we’re fit for Alliance duty.’

He was one to talk about mixed signals. Kaidan thought he could recognize the tactics Shepard was using, the same ones he hadn’t been able to shake in combat training and only pissed Anderson off—and they should’ve. They pissed Kaidan off too, sometimes, when he thought about it, knowing how good Shepard could be when he wasn’t shooting himself in the foot.

‘Fishdog,’ Shepard added. ‘Not enough to be one or the other; gotta be both. Never had one of these before, but I’ve heard about ‘em. First time for everything, right, Kaidan?’

There was a slide of heat in the question that Kaidan didn’t miss. Now he was the one who had to dodge the issue, shuffling closer to Shepard’s side.

‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

‘Ask me after I’ve tried the fishdog,’ Shepard replied. Then, he asked for extra sauce and charmed the turian selling out of charging him extra for it.

That skill, at least, couldn’t be thrown by anything. Not even a weird almost-date during shore leave.

Kaidan was hungry enough that he didn’t mind playing along, but there was no working with a guy if he felt like he had to be the one holding all the cards in order to pull out the ace at the end. It was supposed to be about teamwork. After the training they’d seen, the stuff they’d done, there was always the chance that Shepard wasn’t ever going to be a team player.

Working with him—when it was only the two of them—had been enough to change everything. Kaidan could look back on that moment for the rest of his life and remember when he turned himself around, when he started living again.

It was a lot to pin on one guy. No wonder Shepard was still always a gunshot away from cutting and running. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who wanted to be weighed down, not by anything—or anyone.

Kaidan bit into the fishdog. Shepard was already halfway through his, wiping the sauce off his mouth.

‘You know, we’re gonna miss the movie,’ Kaidan began, but Shepard wasn’t even with him anymore.

‘We’ll catch it next time,’ he said. ‘Those Blasto movies stay in the theaters for _months_. People can’t get enough of all the wobbly pink tentacles, right? I know I can’t.’ He stuffed the rest of his fishdog into Kaidan’s free hand. ‘Never say I didn’t get you anything, Kaidan, but I just remembered something I’ve gotta do. I’ll catch you later—and don’t have too much fun without me, okay? I might just get jealous.’

‘Okay,’ Kaidan said.

It wasn’t. It wasn’t _all right_ , either, but it was the first thing Kaidan could think of saying, mouth full of fishdog and Shepard already on the move.

One foot out of the airlock at all times. Dad had choice words to say about guys like that. But Kaidan still remembered how Shepard threw himself in between anybody else and obvious danger, the way he’d go down on a frag grenade to keep it from hurting someone. He knew it wasn’t about being a coward—but he didn’t know what it _was_ about.

And that was the whole problem with Shepard, Kaidan thought. Knowing what he wasn’t and not knowing what he was.

He ate the rest of his fishdog anyway, waiting around too long for Shepard to come back.

*


	7. SHEPARD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Early part, because of reasons. Shepard meets an old friend.

Shepard put enough distance between him and Kaidan to lose the feeling he got whenever his body was close by, then whipped out his omni-tool, checking for any new messages.

Somebody was tailing him. He’d been on the wrong end of a bad tail too many times to count, more times than he had bruises on his chest and back and sides, way more times than he had scars. He knew when it was happening and he knew how to throw it off, but only when he was operating by himself.

He didn’t want Kaidan to be collateral, anyway.

They’d moved to Arcturus Station to have a better life, even if Shepard was the only one whose circumstances had actually improved. Kaidan didn’t have to know that was the reason, either—maybe he just thought Shepard liked model ships, or had a knack for holding a pistol like he meant business.

But the truth was, enlisting had been the beginning of a promise Shepard had made to himself when nobody else was looking. He wasn’t gonna end up like those guys in East Hastings: too old for gang life and too poor for anything else. Might as well move up while you still had the skills—even if guys like Anderson said he’d learned them the wrong way.

Shepard looked down instead of up on a hunch. Sure enough, the omni-tool was flashing again. Shepard studied a freckle on his wrist, the shadowed hollow beneath a bump of bone as he scanned his peripheries for the tail.

It wasn’t being followed that bothered him as much as not knowing who cared to go to all that trouble.

Military seemed the obvious choice, what with their lack of stealth. Alliance was too concerned with being bold and brass to bother learning how to hide their soldiers in plain sight. Anderson didn’t seem like the type to want Shepard followed—if he had a question, he’d haul Shepard in and ask it—but there were other types at the barracks, training staff who didn’t like that Shepard knew exactly how to handle a grenade or dismantle a heavy rifle.

But the obvious choice never clicked with Shepard. That wasn’t the way his life worked—and seeing fresh messages from Finch wasn’t helping.

He wasn’t the smartest sentinel in the bunch, but he was loyal. If Shepard told him to do something, like _lay off,_ he usually did it.

The tail was getting closer, filtering his way through the crowds of tourists and other cadets on shore leave. Shepard’s stomach growled. The fishdog wasn’t sitting so pretty now.

It was a far cry from Blasto-style action.

Then again, hanar weren’t much for high-speed chases on foot, seeing as how they didn’t have any.

Shepard checked his angles. There were two options here: keep in plain sight and play the advantages of a crowd to cover him against the disadvantages of a crowd slowing him down—or turn into a side-street and hope to hell he didn’t have to wrangle a face-off unarmed and backed into a corner. The latter was the easiest way to disappear, but it was also the easiest way to get shot and dumped, and training exercises back at barracks hadn’t covered this kind of exit strategy.

Anderson would’ve said to meet the target head on. Probably. Then again, Shepard had no idea what guys like Anderson did in situations like this one—because guys like Anderson didn’t tend to get into them in the first place. The whole thing was barely a blip on Anderson’s radar.

At least there weren’t any frag grenades. Shepard’s ears were still recovering from the last one he’d dealt with.

There was an opening nearby—a narrow by-way turning off the main stretch, some kind of garden set-up with benches and a staircase leading down to the lower level—and Shepard didn’t have time to weigh the pros and cons of his tactics. Split decisions were the only ones you ever had to make, and the consequences were yours to live with after.

Shepard took it, ducking past a family pretty as a picture and two salarians arguing with each other about a play they’d just been to. He slid past an environment study of a foreign planet he’d never get the chance to see if he didn’t play this chase right and stopped behind a memorial wall, shoulder pressed against the list of unfamiliar names, waiting for his tail to show up.

At least, this way, he’d get the drop on the guy.

 _If_ there was only one of them crawling up his ass.

The lay of the land was always changing and it was up to Shepard to change with it. He didn’t have a Kessler tucked under his belt or anything, but he was almost top of his class in hand-to-hand combat—and there wasn’t anybody here who’d tell him breaking the rules and tripping a guy up wasn’t on their scheduled list of moves to practice for that day.

Shepard kept his head clear by regulating each breath. Slow and steady; in and out.

Hell, it was just like the old days.

He could see the shadow when it appeared—when it paused, too, trying to decide if it was worth it to stick more than just a shadow around the corner—and Shepard tensed, keeping himself light on the balls of his feet. Just one more step, and he had the guy. Easy.

The shadow wavered. Music from the nearby shops played over the loudspeakers, announcing the latest sales in what _had_ to be an asari’s voice, meant to seduce any wavering customers. Shepard rocked once, silently, sturdy boots and thick soles and fingers fitting into fists.

When the crown of a head poked its way around the memorial, Shepard made for the throat and got the guy into a headlock right away. He wasn’t above pretending to use him as a human shield, with his back against the names of more honorable soldiers. It was a bargaining chip, and even though the idiot put up a struggle, Shepard had weight _and_ skill on him, no problem.

‘Smooth—you _really_ got me,’ Shepard said, tightening his hold on the guy struggling against it. An elbow caught him in the stomach and it hurt, absolutely, but it wasn’t enough to make Shepard let go, only double his efforts. He felt it when the inside of his elbow started to constrict the guy’s breath—and then, when he held up his hands in defeat, choking out a few wordless groans.

Shepard knew those wordless groans. He knew the guy making them.

‘Finch,’ Shepard said, caught off balance—and not for the first time that day.

Knowing who it was didn’t make him any more inclined to let the idiot go, as Finch grabbed Shepard’s forearm and tried to pry it loose.

‘Shit, Shepard,’ he wheezed. ‘Alliance training’s making you _crazy_.’

‘Dumbass,’ Shepard replied. ‘You should’ve gone for the dog-tags first—choked _me_ with ‘em instead. No wonder the Reds are in trouble with that kind of thinking.’

Finch wheezed, which was still one of his better comebacks. Shepard could feel it when he swallowed, the bob of his throat against the muscle holding him in place. It was that more than actually wanting to that made Shepard cool it, easing off, if not letting Finch go completely.

They’d had each other’s backs more times than Shepard could count, but he’d been bred not to like surprises. He liked it even _less_ when Finch took initiative and blew a job, his chances, _their_ odds.

‘Shit,’ Finch said again. He flinched at the suddenness of his own freedom, pulling away to rub his bruised throat. ‘That was some welcome, Shepard. You sure know how to show a guy a good time. You must’ve really been missing me, huh?’

There wasn’t anything new about him, not as far as Shepard could tell. He still had the same pointy face, coated in the same layer of protective grime he cultivated like it was his personal biotic barrier. There were no telltale bruises, no rips in his clothing or burns on his skin that would’ve suggested recent trouble. He smelled like the inside of a krogan’s cargo bay, but that probably had more to do with how he’d arrived at the station than what he’d been doing on Earth.

‘What the hell are you doing here, Finch?’ Shepard asked. It wasn’t unfriendly. He even took a step back himself to give the man some breathing room, eyes taking in either side of the area behind the memorial wall. Getting interrupted by some couple looking for a place to make out or a kid who thought it’d be funny to hide from his parents was the last thing Shepard needed right now.

He knew he was grinning when Finch caught his eye and froze, like he’d found himself on the wrong end of an asari kingpin and her batarian taskforce.

‘I _told_ you already,’ Finch said. He recovered fast; Shepard could say that much for him. ‘Weisman got snapped up by the turians.’

‘No way,’ Shepard said. _Just like old times_ was hitting a little too close to home now. ‘You said he was missing. I’d have remembered if the turians were involved.’

‘Yeah.’ Finch rolled his eyes. ‘You and the turians. I remember.’

Shepard crossed his arms, still up on the balls of his feet like he was gonna have to cut and run at any second. Finch didn’t hold himself like the guys at the Academy; he didn’t own the place and he knew it, but he worked the shadows better than most of the new recruits ever would. He wasn’t the best the Reds had to offer and he could still out-maneuver over half the guys in the place, if he ever showed some initiative.

Finch wiped his nose with the back of his wrist. ‘Damn,’ he added. ‘Look how nice you’re dressing. No wonder you didn’t want me messing up your pretty clothes.’

‘It’s not like that, Finch,’ Shepard said.

‘I don’t know, Shepard,’ Finch replied. ‘Pretty’s the only word I’ve got for it. Pretty _something_ , anyway.’

‘Well if you want me to send Weisman a set of fatigues and a standard-issue t-shirt to keep him warm with the turians, you could’ve said so without coming out all this way.’ Shepard tried to pin Finch with one of the looks Anderson always threw him across the desk. Either that expression didn’t work on guys like Finch or Shepard hadn’t perfected the art of it yet, didn’t have Anderson’s square jaw and kick-your-ass eyes, the same grit in his mouth that only age and experience armored a guy in.

‘One of _our guys_ is in trouble with the damn turians, all right?’ Finch realized too late that he’d raised his voice and took it down a notch—a good instinct, even if he was always figuring those out a step behind the rest. ‘You’d just let something like that happen? For _Alliance_?’

‘It’s not like that,’ Shepard repeated.

‘Call it whatever you want,’ Finch said. ‘But that’s exactly what it is. You’re protecting your own ass because you’re getting comfortable up here—you left us with that job and about twenty others, all so you could play soldier for a while. You think they’d take you in if they knew some of the stuff we’ve done?’

‘That a threat?’ Shepard asked.

It sure sounded like one from where he was standing.

‘Just the truth.’ Finch crossed his arms, too, but he didn’t meet Shepard eye to eye. ‘You know it. Never thought _you’d_ be the one to run out on us, though. Some of the other guys, maybe—sure. The job fell _apart_ , Shepard.’

‘No kidding,’ Shepard said.

It was bound to happen someday—sooner or later, every sour turn came back to bite you in the ass. Shepard had seen it happen; hell, he’d been hired to _make_ it happen more times than he could count. Those were Shepard’s real credentials, right there, smelling like a dump and cursing like a krogan.

‘Just the truth,’ Finch said again. ‘That’s all I’m saying. Wouldn’t be good for your new best friends in the Alliance to learn it, though. And that guy—the one from _Inferno_ , right?’ Finch whistled. ‘Never thought it’d be you, Shepard.’

‘Lay it on a little thicker, why don’t you,’ Shepard said. ‘What did I always tell you about overselling?’

‘Why—is it working?’ Finch asked.

The answer was _all too well_ , but Shepard was still better at playing his cards close to his chest than Finch would ever be. ‘Nothing to do about it after the fact, though,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to do, whisper sweet nothings into an admiral’s ear and have him intercept a turian transport? That’s not how it even works in Alliance, Finch. Don’t be stupid.’

‘Yeah, well, what do I know?’ Finch’s voice had a hard edge to it—the only thing about him that _had_ changed. ‘There’s other ways to help out and you know it. But you probably don’t even remember Weisman, now that you’ve got a new crew you’re running around with.’

‘It’s not a crew,’ Shepard said. ‘They’re squadmates.’

‘Whatever.’ Finch ducked around the memorial wall to check on a sudden burst of laughter passing by, then pulled back in. They were still alone, for all the good it did them, and Shepard could name ten different ways off the top of his head that Finch’s move could’ve gotten him killed in any other situation. ‘I’m just saying, all of this—it’s not you. They probably already know it. And if somebody has to help them along…’

‘You’re an ass,’ Shepard said. It took some work to make it sound like their usual banter, friendly instead of something that was getting under Shepard’s skin.

Finch spread his hands wide, palm-up, like he’d seen colony orphans in the vids do it once and figured he’d cash in on the sympathy vote. ‘Gotta work your strengths. You taught me that, Shep. Though if I’d known you were gonna give it all up for a hard bunk in the middle of space and a Kessler, maybe I wouldn’t have listened so closely.’

‘Yeah yeah,’ Shepard said. He rolled his eyes, letting his shoulders relax while his mind raced over how much Finch had told him, how much he had to be keeping back.

On a job, it was the information no one shared that could fuck things up. Finch meant well but only some of the time, and he didn’t consider the bigger picture—not when he’d always had Shepard around to do it for him. There was something in this Weisman business that smelled sour, and it wasn’t just Finch’s particular bouquet.

‘Look, no one’s saying you’ve got the juice to pull strings on your own,’ Finch added. He was warming up now, like he’d felt the shift in power and he knew what it meant. Finch never thought ahead, never imagined anybody might fall back to let him act like he was in charge for a while. Feeling like he had the biggest quad in the room made him drop his guard. He wasn’t alone in that. Shepard had learned that technique long before they ever met. ‘It’s just that you’ve got _access,_ Shepard. Alliance is making nice with the turians these days. You could take a look at the computers, see if there’s anything about a prisoner transfer… They’ve gotta turn him back to human-controlled space eventually, and _that’s_ when we’ll bust him loose.’

‘This is a prison break now?’ Shepard asked. This time, when he kept his voice low, it wasn’t to make Finch feel like a big man. ‘Jesus, Finch. Aim high, why don’t you?’

‘Like you?’ Finch looked him up and down, then snorted. ‘No way. I’m not dressing up fancy so I can get killed for Alliance whenever they decide they _don’t_ want to play nice with turians anymore. Aim for something you can _hit_.’

‘No wonder you don’t bother with aiming, then,’ Shepard said.

Finch held his ground. A few months of looking after himself and he’d learned to do that, even if he hadn’t learned to keep the Reds out of trouble. Shepard wasn’t asking for miracles. All the changes he’d made, he’d made for himself. And Finch had done the same, looking out for number one—but looking out for Weisman, too, more of a _no man left behind_ motto than Alliance was teaching its new recruits.

Sacrifices had to be made.

Shepard didn’t like thinking like that.

Anderson’s words weighed heavy on his shoulders, but Finch’s attitude was just as solid. The two of them together made for an interesting combination of influences.

‘I’ll see what I can do, Finch,’ Shepard said. ‘No promises. You got that?’

‘Yeah. I got it.’ Finch almost grinned, but his eyes were dark. ‘Sorry I interrupted your _date_.’

‘Shut up,’ Shepard said, grabbing him and messing up his hair.

 _Just like old times_. Except there was somewhere for Shepard to go back to after, a place that was twice as safe as his old digs in East Hastings but precarious as council peace talks when a krogan was in the room. Shepard didn’t mind grabbing the frag grenade and running for the safe zone when the play was his choice. Being sidelined by Finch was a different story.

He should’ve known better.

And there was no way he could tell Kaidan.

*


	8. ALENKO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is it just me, or has AO3 been quite slow lately? Anyway, Kaidan tries to figure Shepard out. It's difficult.

It was a false assumption—that the more time you spent with somebody, the better you’d get to know them.

When Kaidan ran into Williams an hour before curfew and she asked him where Shepard was, Kaidan didn’t have an answer for her. And it didn’t bother her half as much as it bothered him.

He told himself it wasn’t like he was expecting anything out of the date, just a movie he hadn’t wanted to see, a couple of fishdogs, conversation about nothing. Gossip, maybe, or whatever their training officers were doing this time. They wouldn’t mention bruises. It’d be normal, as close to the idea as they could get, anyway. And maybe, if Shepard’s hand wandered to the back of Kaidan’s neck in the theater, rubbing the scar beneath his hairline with his thumb, that would’ve made the whole thing worth it. It was the break they needed once in a while, restocking and recuperating, before they got back to training again.

But Shepard had cut and run—and the whole thing was fishier than that Tummy Tingling Tuchanka Sauce.

Kaidan was still regretting eating his fishdog and the rest of Shepard’s by the time they got back to the barracks, lights bright through the view of Arcturus behind them. It was pretty from a distance, and whether Shepard was still out there or had come back early was anybody’s guess.

It wasn’t Kaidan’s place to worry about him. Not unless they were on the same squad together, when distraction would mean something bad for the team and it _was_ his place.

‘Shit, Alenko, relax a little,’ Williams said on her way past him. ‘Could’ve told you myself not to eat those fishdogs. Guess they didn’t agree with you, huh? You’re looking downright _green_.’

It hadn’t been the food so much as it was the company—or the lack of company. Kaidan headed back to the bunks, then veered off course to the usual meeting spot.

The door was locked and Kaidan didn’t know how to crack the code for it. That was Shepard’s thing and Kaidan had been more than fine with letting him take care of it.

That was his first mistake. But they all of those tied into being careless in the end, stupid about their situation, letting what they had going on turn into a blind spot. The timing just wasn’t working out.

Kaidan had already screwed up his life once. The difference now was making a second chance for himself—and just because Shepard had been there for it didn’t mean it was _his_ life.

By the time Kaidan had stripped down to his briefs and his t-shirt and crawled into his bunk, his headache was back. The down-time was great and all, but that wasn’t what they were there for.

Was he disappointed? Hell yeah.

But he knew better. He always had.

Guys like Shepard didn’t make bank by being predictable. Being good at the kind of jobs Kaidan had seen him working took a certain flair for _not_ being somewhere when everyone expected you to show up. Not that their late-night trysts in the simulation rooms were anything like a drug or weapon run—but Kaidan could get his head around it, compare and contrast and draw the right parallels.

Shepard didn’t do routine. It was probably taking everything he had just to adjust to three square meals a day and turning in when someone called lights out.

Kaidan couldn’t hold that against him. At the end of the day, they weren’t meant to answer to each other.

He woke up feeling like he’d never closed his eyes, all the bruises from two days before coming back twice as hard. Shore leave hadn’t felt like the vacation he needed and when Kaidan stumbled into the communal bathrooms to brush his teeth, he found he didn’t care much for the guy staring back at him in the mirror.

By breakfast he’d managed to shave and wash his face, but it hadn’t improved his outlook. He saw Williams in the mess hall, but not Shepard—that much he managed to notice before telling himself he wasn’t looking at all.

‘Damn, Alenko,’ Williams said. She crackled the wrapper of her protein packet, rolling it around in one hand. ‘Someone piss in your cereal bar this morning?’

‘Do you always start conversations like this?’ Kaidan knew it was harsh, maybe even out of line, but knowing something didn’t automatically mean he could fix it. If it did, the thing he had going with Shepard would be smooth riding all the way. ‘I’m starting to get why no one sits with you at lunch.’

‘Ouch,’ Williams said, in a tone that meant the comment had glanced right off her armor. ‘What’s with you two today? Lover’s spat?’

‘ _Us_?’ Kaidan asked. He didn’t dare to guess she meant what he was thinking—that anyone else could see the invisible connection between him and Shepard. Kaidan hadn’t realized how much he’d depended on it until he’d started to doubt its existence.

‘Yeah, you and Private I’ve Got Some Things to Take Care Of,’ Williams said. ‘You could scare the scales off a turian with that attitude—both of you. I’m no morning person, but I was just trying to make conversation.’

‘Technically, turians don’t have scales,’ Kaidan said.

‘Nice evasive maneuvers,’ Williams replied. ‘Bet they’ll serve you well in the field. But don’t forget—duck and weave only takes you so far, Alenko.’

Kaidan cleared his throat, a lump of something stuck in the back. ‘He said he had business to take care of?’ he asked. ‘You’ve seen him today?’

Williams shrugged, not bothering to finish chewing her protein bar before she spoke again. ‘Yeah, but when _doesn’t_ he? Never met a mysterious soldier before and I don’t know if it’s crazy-good or crazy-crazy. Either way, the only thing you can do with a guy like that is not ask too many questions, right? Then, when somebody else shows up to interrogate you, you’re telling the truth if you say you don’t know anything.’

Kaidan didn’t want to be in the heavy armor of any hostile Williams came up against in the field. They weren’t going to know what hit them—not before it took them out.

It was better to have somebody like that on your side. Williams picked something out of her molar, whistling about how sticky it was. ‘Still, you know how he loves his breakfast. I’m surprised he isn’t here to take twice his fair share _and_ charm the lunch ladies about it.’

Kaidan didn’t know how Shepard loved his breakfast. He knew how Shepard _liked_ to be touched, what parts on Kaidan’s body he _liked_ kissing, but what kind of protein bars he favored or what kind of snacks he ate most often, all those little details that made people real, were part of a blank spot in Kaidan’s file on him. Not that he was keeping tabs. It was just… Spend enough time with the same person, your brain kept a private tally, especially when it was important to know that person to the best of your abilities.

 _To the best of your abilities_. That was the catch. Maybe Kaidan was top of his class in biotics division and he wasn’t doing too bad in the other training courses, either, something that’d look good in _his_ data file. Something that’d make his Dad proud, even. But Shepard didn’t come with an instruction manual or any L2 implants to help figure him out. He was unpredictable, worse than a simulation sandstorm on Mars.

He got into Kaidan’s lungs, into his eyes. He brought headaches with him all the same, little bruises and teeth-marks, distractions and sleepless nights.

Kaidan swallowed. That protein grit was still stuck in his throat and Williams clapped him on the back, hard enough to shake it loose, also hard enough to pulverize Kaidan’s ribs.

‘Did I miss where we were starting hand-to-hand combat?’ Kaidan asked, doing his best to recover while Williams grinned.

‘It’s good for you,’ she said. ‘Puts hair on your chest. I’ll see you in the situation room.’

Keeping busy was the only cure for a brain that wouldn’t stop asking questions it couldn’t answer. And it was good practice for keeping his head when there was too much going on outside. Kaidan did one of his best sandstorm runs ever—just a few seconds short of the time he’d set with Shepard and Williams—and the sweat burned clean through the doubt.

It was what it was. Accepting that was the first step toward not being stupid about this. If he saw Shepard, then he saw Shepard.

If he didn’t know Shepard’s favorite breakfast, that was okay.

Kaidan took his helmet off, wiping the sweat off his brow. ‘Nice shooting,’ Williams said, already suiting up for her turn. ‘You took out, what—five hostiles? Guess that means I’m going for six.’

‘Good luck,’ Kaidan said. He owed that much to her for the way he’d behaved at breakfast.

At least, with all that armor, words glanced off her way lighter than bullets. ‘No luck necessary, Alenko,’ she replied, and headed in with the rest of her team.

Shepard was supposed to be on that team—a quick glance at the rosters told Kaidan as much. But he’d switched himself out for a later run, and Kaidan could feel curiosity tickling his skin like the sweat on the back of his neck. One of them he could wipe off. The other one wasn’t as easy.

‘Permission to take five, sir,’ he asked the supervising officer in the break room.

‘Granted,’ she replied. ‘But make it quick, Alenko.’

Technically, he wasn’t _planning_ on making it anything but. All he needed was to replace some of his depleted electrolytes, not go looking for someone who didn’t want to be found.

They were out of all but Kaidan’s least favorite flavor of juice, some powdered pink stuff that called itself tropical and tasted, Shepard once said, like krogan farts smelled. But drinking it was what gave Kaidan the final push, standing as soon as his knees steadied to slip out into the hall.

Some days, all life had to offer was shitty proteins, endless reps of barrier drills and a name crossed out from where it should’ve been, but that didn’t mean Kaidan had to lie down and take it.

A year ago, he wouldn’t have bothered taking the initiative like this. Hell, months ago he wouldn’t have had the will _or_ the inclination. But Kaidan had spent enough time around—or with—Shepard that he had some idea of how he worked, even though his flight path was erratic and nobody, maybe not even Shepard himself, could predict his coordinates.

He didn’t have the first clue where to start looking, but process of elimination made it so he didn’t have to be C-Sec’s best detective to wager a decent guess. Wherever Shepard was, he obviously didn’t want an audience. That meant he had to be holed up somewhere there wasn’t already a huge presence of training cadets or off-duty officers. Kaidan hadn’t memorized the rosters, but he’d been in blues long enough to have some idea of how it came together.

For the rest, there was instinct. And what his Dad had taught him. And what little he _did_ know about Shepard.

Kaidan kept his head up when he walked, shoulders back like he knew what he was doing. Confidence could stand in for a lot when it came to working within the Alliance. Kaidan had the training and the bearing that came with it, something he never thought he’d wind up grateful for.

But there were a lot of things in Kaidan’s life he hadn’t banked on. That didn’t mean he couldn’t adapt and use them to his advantage—more complicated than L2 implants, but his to make something out of all the same.

Fifth floor was for communications training, but it also held the consoles cadets used to call home. It had the distinction of being the place Admiral Hackett visited first on the rare occasion he stopped by, so Kaidan had a feeling there was more going on up there than their staff sergeants let on.

It was a little ambitious to try the stairs so soon after taking five, but Kaidan gripped the rail and started to climb. Shepard seemed like the type who’d hear an elevator coming, anyway.

All it took was one foot after the other. They’d been drilled in tougher conditions than this and when you looked at it like that, everything was a learning experience.

Of course, it was risky. Tactically, it was a Shepard move, going into a situation without knowing all the players and figuring things out as he went—usually putting himself in the line of fire for it along the way. He relied on speed and sharp eyes to duck whatever came next but sooner or later, you had to start trusting other people to take care of themselves. To take care of _you_.

Kaidan was doing well enough in his training that even if he was caught wandering in the wrong zone, he’d get off without a demerit. It’d be the first and last time he ever did something so half-cocked—but like Shepard said, there was a first time for everything.

A lot of those firsts came with Shepard. Kissing the back of his neck, kneeling between his legs, pulling Kaidan down onto his chest. Kaidan swallowed, the tropical taste still on his tongue. If he didn’t want to think of what he did with Shepard as their _last_ time, that wasn’t up to him.

If he chose to do nothing, though… Then the whole thing was dead before it ever left the docking bay.

This time of day, the fifth floor was actually pretty quiet. That could work for or against him—if Kaidan didn’t have a crowd to get lost in then anyone he ran into would stop to take notice. Sticking to the shadows wasn’t his specialty; Shepard would’ve known what to do but Kaidan couldn’t think like him. He didn’t want to think like him. It was all about balance, finding skills that complimented yours, working with somebody who saw what you didn’t. Perspective and, beneath that, integrity.

Kaidan glanced down the hall. No sign of any superior officers heading out of their offices or any cadets on break thinking about talking to mom and dad with their free time. There was no way of knowing how long he’d be in the clear so Kaidan took the opening, footsteps echoing just loudly enough to make him nervous.

Like everything else that happened to him with Shepard, because of Shepard, for Shepard—it was crazy.

Maybe not as crazy as his Mom training a Kessler on him, but it came close.

He’d broken into his own house, broken into simulation rooms, broken his own rules, and now he was breaking Alliance trust. Knowing it was important didn’t make it any less wrong, and Kaidan was frowning when he heard the soft bleep of a door being opened from inside.

Kaidan ducked behind a corner the same way he ducked behind cover in training, listening for the sharp, even clip of a soldier’s boots heading his way. But there was silence. Someone was taking a lot of trouble to make no noise, a shadow growing as it came closer.

It had to be Shepard. Kaidan didn’t know how he knew, only that he did. His instincts were scrambled, busted like his ribs after Williams pounded on his back. At least he didn’t feel tired anymore, riding on too much adrenaline to second-guess himself before he reached out and caught Shepard by the elbow, pulling him around the corner and pinning him against the wall.

It lasted for half a second before Shepard was on the offensive—the only defense he knew—getting an elbow under Kaidan’s chin, twisting his foot around Kaidan’s ankle, flipping their positions. Kaidan hit the wall across the way with a dull thud—but he knew how Shepard worked. He’d watched him in combat training, studying the moves with more than just a critical eye.

So it came in handy for pulling one of Shepard’s own tricks on him, flipping their positions all over again. This time, Shepard hit the wall, the air rushing out of his lungs. Kaidan could see his eyes widen—bright, clear, honest blue—just before the usual guards fell into place and it was gone. Like it hadn’t been there in the first place.

‘Whoa,’ Shepard said. ‘You missed me that much, huh, Kaidan? You could’ve called or something—although this is pretty hot, too.’

It was. Kaidan’s blood was pounding in his temples and he knew it was more important to stay in control than make a point. He backed off—because being too close made it impossible to think—and Shepard rubbed his throat.

‘Damn, you’re good,’ he said.

‘That’s what they tell me,’ Kaidan said. He could still taste the powdered electrolyte mix on the back of his tongue, sickly-sweet even as it gave his body the juice it needed to keep going. The compliment didn’t make him flush, but coming from Shepard, it meant something. He did his best not to let it go to his head. ‘Of course, I’ve got nothing on the skills you’re packing. Switching teams, sneaking out… What are you doing up here, Shepard?’

Shepard coughed, clearing his throat. Kaidan knew better than to assume he was angling for the sympathy vote at this point in their friendship—they knew each other too well for Kaidan to think that had been a serious brawl. He’d seen Shepard in action, when he wanted or _needed_ someone to go down.

This wasn’t it.

‘Anderson send you up here with a teacher’s note?’ Shepard asked. He was quick to speak first, the same tactic Kaidan had used with Williams. Seeing it play down, Kaidan understood why she’d clapped him as hard as she did on the back. Payback.

It sucked.

And recognizing the tactic didn’t mean he had the perfect tool to disarm it. Kaidan swallowed his impatience, crossing his arms over the armored weave of his shirt.

‘It’s a little early to be ditching class.’ He wanted to cringe at the sound of his own voice, higher than he’d planned and breathless from their tussle. Later, he’d have a headache where the back of his skull knocked the wall, but just now he was looking to capitalize on his timing.

Neither of them commented on how he’d found Shepard. And _why_ was a question even more complicated than that.

‘I wasn’t ditching,’ Shepard said, while Kaidan did his best not to look at the red mark on his throat. Kaidan had put that there—and it wasn’t from his teeth or his lips. It wasn’t that kind of bruise. ‘I…had a scheduling conflict.’

‘On the fifth floor,’ Kaidan said.

‘It’s top secret stuff,’ Shepard said. There was a flicker of his old grin there, the one that let Kaidan believe he was in on the joke sometimes. ‘Guess I must’ve impressed someone whose name rhymes with _jacket._ ’

The trouble with Shepard, Kaidan realized, was that he made the truth sound like a lie while all the lies sounded like the truth. By the time you figured that out, your wires had been crossed so bad there was no way of untangling them. And if Kaidan had to question every little thing Shepard said, he’d always be on the defensive.

Things couldn’t be easy like they were in Vancouver. Even then, Kaidan knew he was putting a spin on their time together—which hadn’t been as easy as distance made it seem.

It’d been good, though. Really good.

‘You think I’m going to buy a story like that?’ Kaidan asked.

Shepard shrugged, fingers lingering against the flush on his throat, tracing the shape of the mark on his skin. ‘You don’t think I’m worth the attention?’

If anything, Kaidan thought he was worth twice that. He was worth more than all this sneaking around. ‘Yeah,’ Kaidan said. ‘I _do_ think you’re worth the attention. And if you’re messing with your chances here, you’re going to screw it all up. What happened on shore leave—’

‘—wasn’t any big deal,’ Shepard cut in smoothly. He took his hand away from his pulse. ‘Just…had to take care of something, that’s all.’

‘Something,’ Kaidan said.

‘You know you look like Anderson when you make that face?’ Shepard rubbed his jaw next, working out a knot. It was broader; his cheeks were filling out. They were still sharp but Kaidan could really see the changes in his face even in the darkness, maybe because of the darkness. His eyes were still bright, but they reflected light from the hall like one-sided glass, taking everything in and letting nothing out. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Anderson’s a great soldier. Wouldn’t mind having that attitude. But as far as looks go, it’s not flattering.’

‘Shepard,’ Kaidan said.

Maybe he should’ve gone for John.

Shepard looked away—the only time he’d ever done that instead of charging head first like a krogan grunt into the center of a fight. ‘We’ll catch the Blasto movie some other time, all right? _And_ I’ll even stay and eat the fishdog and everything.’

‘No more fishdogs,’ Kaidan said. ‘I need to know what’s going on here.’

He wasn’t breathless anymore, but his voice still didn’t sound like it needed to. It lacked the experience, the authority. Kaidan was no Captain Anderson and he knew it; Shepard didn’t have any reason to listen to him, much less respect him. And after all that sneaking out… Kaidan didn’t have any reason to listen to himself. He hadn’t been on point lately, but Shepard—he was way out of orbit.

‘You talking about the Hackett thing?’ Shepard asked. Casual. He’d looped one thumb in his belt, crossing one ankle over the other. He caught Kaidan’s attention out of the corner of his eye and they both looked away.

Excellent soldiering technique. Really brave. They were both better than this, not just on the field but off.

So why were they bringing out the worst in each other?

‘Or do you think a kid from the streets can’t make his own fortune with Alliance?’ The question was just as light, just as casual. Shepard’s posture didn’t change. That didn’t mean Kaidan couldn’t still feel each word like it was a clip unloaded right into his chest, bruising his skin beneath a bulletproof chestpiece. ‘Cause you wouldn’t be the only one.’

‘I think you can make your own fortune whatever you do,’ Kaidan said. ‘I’ve seen crazier things happen. Much crazier. But this… The way you’re acting is pretty crazy, too. It’s not like that gang out here, Shepard.’

‘It’s like that gang everywhere, Kaidan,’ Shepard said. ‘People just dress it up different.’

‘You really think that?’ Kaidan asked.

Shepard paused, pushing off the wall. His shoulder brushed Kaidan’s as he passed by—but he didn’t turn around to look at him. ‘I don’t have to,’ he replied. ‘I know it.’

Kaidan’s headache slid in to replace the empty space Shepard left behind. It wasn’t the worst feeling in the world, but it was a pretty close second. He watched Shepard’s shoulders as he walked away, broad and strong, but looking more like they belonged to the guy Kaidan had danced with in _Inferno_ than the one who’d enlisted with him a few months later.

Mom would’ve known what to do about that. She wouldn’t have let him go. But Kaidan was twenty years old. He had to figure himself out before he could work on cracking the code for anyone else.

He didn’t know the right thing to say and anyway, he was late for training already. There was no use going down for something that might’ve been an illusion in the first place, nothing more than a simulation module designed to prepare a guy for the real world situations he’d live or die by someday soon.

So Kaidan headed back to class, and he wasn’t even caught along the way.

*


	9. SHEPARD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh AO3. Stop being so slow. Anyway, Shepard calls Kaidan a bastard accidentally.

Shepard was fucked, and he couldn’t even say it out loud in case the wrong guy with the wrong number of stripes on his sleeve overheard him.

His throat still hurt when he swallowed. It was nothing major—he’d get over it—but the reminder was something he could’ve lived without, Kaidan’s big eyes for once full of something other than wary appreciation.

Running out on him didn’t sit right with Shepard, but neither did roping him into the latest job. There was a difference between using a guy once for cover and letting him risk his future for a couple of orphan gang members.

Raw talent and quick reflexes wouldn’t count for shit if Kaidan got into real trouble, the kind Shepard was used to.

Except just now he wasn’t such a shining example of _handling things_ either.

Normally, it would’ve been smooth flying. He’d never have lasted in the Reds if running into a dead end every now and then slowed him down. Get into enough no-win situations and eventually one bad option started looking better than the rest. Shepard knew how to polish shit to make it shine—or at least so the rest of the world could believe he was doing all right for another day.

But Kaidan didn’t play by the same rules.

He was the wrench in the drive core—making even the simplest task go haywire. It should’ve been no big deal to get the information Finch needed; hell, Shepard already had a ton of practice bypassing the security systems in the building, even if hacking information terminals was a lot less fun than setting up a simulated date.

And there was no payoff to the end of this job, no Kaidan waiting for him all pale and sleepy-eyed in a room full of model ships when it was over. There’d be relief at getting to put everything out of his head, maybe, but Shepard couldn’t even pretend to relish that for a hot minute.

Doing a favor like this was as good as rolling over and agreeing to be the Reds’ man on the inside. He didn’t need a straight-shooter like Ash to tell him that.

The problem was, he still hadn’t thought of a better plan.

Shepard knew that if he caved for a guy like Finch once, then it’d set a precedent for all their future dealings. And Finch knew how to push the right buttons—reckless most of the time and not extra smart, but clever enough to keep himself just above rock bottom.

If he saw Shepard was an easy play, he’d be after him forever. If you gave in, you were a sucker—plain and simple. No matter what came up in the future, Finch could say the magic words and Shepard would come running like a trained varren. All bite, sure, but with a collar and a tether and somebody to jerk his chain.

It wasn’t like Shepard could go to Anderson with the problem because the problem was that he needed to keep Finch _away_ from Anderson. From everybody. The guys Shepard trained with, the guys he had fun with now and then, who thought his street smarts were a game in the mess hall and nothing more, who laughed at his jokes and tried to measure his talent on the simulation fields. They sized him up and they respected what they saw, a different thrill than anything on the streets, even the best jobs Shepard had ever pulled off with another kind of team.

They weren’t so different. But Shepard was used to exploiting the small details—something he’d taught Finch a little too well.

At least he was learning, only Shepard didn’t feel proud.

If anything, he felt the opposite, scraping rock bottom himself, grinding his teeth and missing dead-center.

Kaidan had caught him at work—casing the joint, checking the rosters, learning where but more importantly _when_ he could scan the information he needed about turian transports. Kaidan was sharp, so he knew something was up—but then, hadn’t _Shepard_ always known there was no chance in hell or _Inferno_ what they had was made for lasting?

 _Aim for the stars_ , he reminded himself. It had a bitter edge to it, the memory of the view from Kaidan’s bedroom skylight, what the dark sky looked like over Thessia at night and all the dumb-luck hope Shepard had about something specific for once.

Something with a name.

‘Shit,’ Shepard said.

‘You’re off your game today, Shepard,’ Ash replied, while he reached for another clip, dropping the empty one hot and sizzling at his feet. He was still the guy with the fastest loading time of the bunch, but speed didn’t matter when you lost your accuracy, and balance was what made you a good marksman. Balance—and trust.

Ash was planted with her usual stance, firm and solid. There wasn’t anything in the galaxy that could knock her off her feet. For all that she would’ve made a good Red, she wasn’t one. She belonged here and she knew it, which was the trust part of the equation.

Shepard could respect that.

He couldn’t imagine Finch’s face on the target dummy but he unloaded the next full round into all the right places—kneecap to take a hostile down without taking them out; shoulder to disarm them; head-shot for last if they kept on charging.

Sometimes you needed information. You needed an enemy alive to tell you what the hell was going on. Shepard was the only one there who got that point of the exercise, whose hands didn’t shake when he chose _incapacitate_ instead of _kill_.

‘That was a good recovery down there, Shepard,’ Anderson told him, hands folded behind his back. ‘ _Recovery_ being the key word. It’s about how you finish things, not how you start them. Nice shooting.’

Shepard knew he didn’t deserve that honor. But even a guy like Anderson could only see so much.

‘Yes, sir,’ Shepard said, and the word stuck in his throat along with the memory of treating Kaidan so low that afternoon. As long as Shepard didn’t swallow, it wouldn’t reach anything vital. It’d stay where it was: a real pain in the neck, but nothing more serious.

He stopped between training rounds to check his messages in private. His omni-tool was lit up like a holiday on the Citadel, all messages from Finch. Shepard could practically hear his heavy breathing, the weight on his shoulders and chest.

‘You’re killing me today,’ Ash told him at dinner. ‘Get your head off the clouds, Shepard, and back on Arcturus. I thought you were better than this.’

He wasn’t.

He grinned, drumming his fingers on the table. ‘Just trying to give the other guys a fair shot,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t want them to lose morale, since I beat ‘em all the rest of the time.’

‘You’re full of shit sometimes, you know that?’ Ash asked.

‘Only sometimes?’ Shepard tried grinning. ‘I must be messing up somewhere.’

‘More than just _somewhere,_ ’ Ash said. ‘You’d better watch yourself—because you can bet everyone _else_ is watching _you_ around the clock. They know you’re the one to beat, which means they’re _gonna_ do their best to beat you.’ She speared a rubbery tentacle with her fork. The mess cook had served up something called _Calamari Surprise,_ complete with a comment about how it was an asari favorite back on Illium.

Shepard could appreciate the resemblance, if not their taste in cuisine.

‘You’re gonna give me a big head if you keep telling me how important I am all the time,’ Shepard said, shifting his tone just to see if she’d notice. Flirtation tended to glance off Ash like polonium rounds off a biotic barrier, but he hadn’t worked out yet whether it was the tactics that had no effect on her, or the guy doing the flirting. Either way, it was something to pass the time and it got his mind off all the other shit in his life. Any docking bay in an electric storm, right?

‘They watch everyone,’ Ash said. Shepard watched his shot bounce to one side and fizzle out, almost as if it’d been real. She was right—he _was_ off his game today. ‘Pull your head out of your ass long enough to look at someone other than Alenko for a change and _maybe_ you’d have that figured out by now.’

It hit close to home—not because it was true or because he didn’t get it already, but because Shepard didn’t like hearing it out loud. What he did in private was just that, and he didn’t need Ash reminding him of the times when he’d been obvious enough for everyone to see it.

‘You know…’ Shepard had to shift his grip on his fork when he realized he was holding it like a weapon. ‘You’d digest a lot better if you didn’t attack meals like they’re hand-to-hand drills.’

‘You’re not the only one with something to prove,’ Ash said. ‘Just remember that, all right?’

Shepard figured he had to be in bad shape if Ash was the one suddenly doling out the pep talks. And he only spotted Kaidan once mid-meal, keeping his head down over fried squid with Jenkins and Tanaka.

At least none of them was laughing. Jenkins had a _terrible_ sense of humor.

Watching was an important part of doing and Shepard always cased a joint before he moved in on it. Except with Kaidan, he was staring long after he should’ve moved on, doing things backwards and half upside-down.

Kaidan didn’t lift his head. Ash didn’t comment. But she did have a look on her face Shepard couldn’t blame her for.

‘You’ve gotta be part asari,’ Shepard told her, sliding away from the table and using his tray like a deflecting shield. ‘The way you read minds like that… Hey, what’m I thinking right now?’

‘That it’s gonna hurt when I kick your ass at hand-to-hand training tomorrow,’ Ash replied.

She was probably right about that. A little pain every now and then was good for you; it kept you in check and in shape, remembering everybody out there was gunning to knock you down a peg. Shepard laughed but it wasn’t for anyone else’s morale, just his.

He dropped the tray onto the stack and headed out of the mess, knowing all the schedules—all the routines, and all the empty hallways.

It was a Tuesday, just past eighteen-hundred. He had a clear shot now to get to the fifth level and most of the guys up there would be on their dinner break, too, probably enjoying something a lot more appetizing than the Calamari Surprise. At least it settled in Shepard’s stomach better than garbage; he wasn’t complaining about that. He’d even gone back for seconds, although he wasn’t like Finch. He _was_ aiming high. When he thought about standing on the other side of Anderson’s desk, he could feel his shoulders straighten.

And he was getting ahead of himself. He had to deal with the Finch problem first, his future later.

In the end, Finch was right. The Reds had been Shepard’s long before these other recruits were a part of his life. They were his responsibility and who was to say he couldn’t juggle both—at least until Finch stepped up to fill his boots?

This whole play… It meant Finch had some talent. It was a better pinch than he’d ever done while Shepard was still taking care of the briefing and the debriefing, so to speak, back before he even knew what that shit _meant_. Out from under Shepard’s shadow, Finch was gonna be something, too.

Just not the something Shepard wanted for himself. He got that now, dealing with heavier firepower and way better equipment than the stuff he lifted from the occasional earth-based armory transport.

He liked the Kessler. He liked it a lot. The weight in his hands, the recoil, the heat against his armored gloves… He liked the armor, too, the way the light glinted off the curved helmets, just like in the movies.

Maybe he even liked the company. Ash, for one. Kaidan. The way they’d done that Thessia training run like a real team; the way they’d had each other’s backs.

It was a good thing they had going for them. You couldn’t fake trust like that—but you _could_ fuck it up. And Shepard didn’t have the time or the space to think about Kaidan now that he already had.

He made it to the fifth floor in record time, avoiding two drill sergeants and what appeared to be an unscheduled biotics field trip along the way. He ignored Finch’s twenty or so messages, found the right door, and let himself in like this was any other job back in Vancouver—even if he didn’t have another guy out front to play lookout.

Couldn’t trust anyone else’s eyes except his own, anyway.

He was long past the point of getting sweaty palms whenever he was on the clock. It was the one thing he’d read on his current file that made sense—cracking codes wasn’t just for fun; knowing how he measured up against everybody else was an important part of keeping on the balls of his toes. _Keeps his head under pressure. Strong leadership potential_. The idea that it meant something made his chest swell and not in the bad way, but again, he didn’t have the wiggle-room for letting himself get distracted by any of the good things in the middle of one of the bad ones.

He’d squirmed his way free of plenty tighter spots than this before. Finch might’ve come into a new-found talent, putting the heat on an old friend, but Shepard still had him beat. No problem. This was one of the easier problems.

Back in the day, Shepard would’ve laughed at a job that had him gathering information instead of putting himself on the line for quick cash or a protection detail. Clicking keys and sliding around guards unseen was the very definition of cushy, or at least it had been before Kaidan came around.

Meeting a rich guy had a way of altering your perceptions—but Shepard had been floating with his head outside the atmosphere long enough.

It was time to come back down to earth.

Typing was harder in gloves. The extra time it was taking made Shepard sweat, but it was better than the alternative, leaving his DNA all over the datapads for any random scan to find. He’d cultivate his patience a little if it meant not getting caught on a stupid detail.

Sure enough, Finch had been right about the prisoner transfer logs. Arcturus Station was the first line of defense for Earth against the rest of space—it was a stepping stone to guard the relevant mass relays, and it’d be the first stop for anyone coming from council space to drop off a _human_ prisoner.

Shepard was pulling up the right file— _Weisman, Curt,_ from the sector that was roped off for turian space—when he heard noise over his shoulder. They were footsteps, hurried and not deliberate, like whoever was coming up behind him didn’t feel like _they_ were supposed to be there either.

Shepard only knew one person on the station who didn’t act like he owned every room he walked into. It just so happened to be the _last_ person he wanted to see while he was busting into the encrypted detention unit files.

‘Shepard—’ Kaidan said.

Shepard’s shoulder twitched, but he didn’t turn around. _Weisman, Curt_ was still on the screen in front of him, and he wouldn’t get another chance like this. Finch’s insistent messages were more than clear about the window of time they had to cut Weisman loose.

‘Look,’ Kaidan continued, a grit in his voice that made it sound deeper than usual, ‘whatever’s going on… I want to help you, Shepard. If it isn’t something you can handle on your own—hell, even if it’s got you running around like this, ruining your chances when everyone here knows you’re going to make a damn good soldier—then the least you can do is let someone else in on it. Let _me_ in on it. I don’t know what you’re dealing with and if you think I’m assuming too much about how close we are, then fine. So be it. But I’m not letting you off thinking I didn’t want— That I wasn’t going to _try_ to help. That I’d give up so easy, after everything.’

It was honest, raw. It was distracting. It was everything Shepard had wanted to hear—everything he hadn’t admitted he’d wanted. It was pure Kaidan, too, the way his brow wrinkled up when he was thinking too hard past a headache that wouldn’t go easy on him—and the way he was true to himself despite himself.

There wasn’t anybody like him in East Hastings. There wasn’t anybody like him on Arcturus, either.

Shepard had to turn around; he needed to look at him. And he was going to, until the data he was scanning hit him just as hard and even lower than Kaidan’s attempts to… Whatever it was. _Do right by him_ , maybe, something that hurt just as much as it helped. It was the best thing that’d ever happened to a guy like Shepard, short of meeting Kaidan in the first place, but Shepard didn’t know what to do with a good thing. He couldn’t cover it up and get it to a safety zone like a frag grenade, not before it detonated right there in his arms, tucked against his chestplate. 

A lifetime of conditioning let Shepard focus on what was right in front of him instead of getting blown over by everything else. _Weisman, Curt_ was in custody not for some petty crime or protecting the wrong smuggler, but for poisoning the food supplies for a turian colony. And that wasn’t what the Tenth Street Reds were.

Not Shepard’s Reds.

Not any guys he’d go down protecting, anyway.

‘You goddamn bastard,’ Shepard said.

Behind him, Kaidan sucked in a sharp breath. ‘…Right,’ he said. ‘I guess… I should’ve expected that. I don’t even know what I was thinking. You made it pretty clear that you didn’t want me as backup on this one, and—’

Shepard turned around. He knew it was gonna be bad—whatever Kaidan was wearing on his face—but the way it was blank was even worse than Shepard was expecting. And that was his fault, too, for not listening to Anderson when he’d explained strategies. For trying to do everything himself, which was exactly what Anderson had warned him against for _exactly_ this reason.

It wasn’t just himself he’d shot in the foot with that style of fighting, either. It was his team who suffered the casualties—just like Anderson had said it would be.

It would’ve been easy to slap on a grin and say _just messing with you, Kaidan_. Or it should’ve been. Shepard wiped the sweat off the back of his neck and no words came, easy or otherwise. He held up his hands and shrugged, and Kaidan, who was already taking a step backwards, stopped where he was.

‘That bad, huh?’ he asked.

For a rich kid from English Bay, he was always perceptive. Shepard felt like a sheet of glass—that transparent. Was it a relief? Only halfway.

‘It isn’t good,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t talking about you, by the way. Just…for the record.’

‘Right.’ Kaidan swallowed. ‘I…get that. Now.’

‘Good,’ Shepard said.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan replied.

They could keep it up all night if Shepard let them. Kaidan had done his part and Shepard was the one who wasn’t holding up his end of the partnership. If it could still be called that—if it could still be called anything.

Was it practicality that kept him from relying on anybody else, or was it pride? Shepard didn’t know where one ended and the other began, but he was starting to realize the balance was listing more to one side than he was pretending.

‘It’s kind of a long story,’ Shepard said. ‘Pretty boring, too. Nowhere close to Blasto action, that’s for sure.’

Kaidan folded his arms over his chest. ‘Try me.’ 

Like it was that easy. But Shepard didn’t want to bother with making it hard. He wasn’t into throwing out some test for Kaidan to pass, creating another system of checks and lock-codes for him to wiggle his way through like an obstacle course in one of the training rooms on the lower levels. He didn’t _have_ to test Kaidan—because he’d already proved he was as good as Shepard was going to get. Better than Shepard _deserved_ by a long shot, but that only mattered to the people who were keeping score.

He took a step forward, crossing his arms so he wouldn’t reach out. It took willpower, the same kind that’d kept him alive all those years when every instinct he had was screaming for him to rush right into the line of fire.

Whatever his face looked like—whatever expression he was making—it was keeping Kaidan around. Shepard was grateful for the lack of reflective glass in the upper levels so he didn’t have to see it for himself.

For once, he didn’t need to know.

‘Okay,’ Shepard said. He’d been hauled in by neighborhood cops more times than he could count—it was easy to shut his brain off and just tell it like he’d seen it. That way, he didn’t have to think about how Kaidan was gonna take the news, whether the truth was actually what he wanted or just what he thought he did. Still, there was only one way to find out. ‘Finch—you remember Finch, old friend of mine from back on earth—came all the way to the station the other day. Hell if I know how he got here—smelled like he rode over in someone’s insulated goods in the cargo hold, and I’m figuring that’s exactly what he did.’

‘He came _here,_ ’ Kaidan repeated. Shepard could see him taking it in, the minute when he decided it wasn’t enough information to go on and he was gonna need more. ‘I take it he wasn’t looking to enlist.’

‘Actually, I suggested it,’ Shepard said. ‘But apparently he doesn’t like the food.’

Kaidan snorted, which was all Shepard needed to get down into the trenches. The whole explanation was like a mine-field; everywhere he stepped something was bound to blow. But he’d never introduced Kaidan the Reds—so it took some extra time to explain Weisman, how he’d been an asshole to begin with but never on the scale Shepard was seeing now. How the Reds had gone from gang to terrorist group the second he’d turned his back on them. How Shepard was willing to stick his neck out for an old friend—but not for somebody who was gonna murder a bunch of civilians just because they were turians.

‘So, that’s where it is,’ Shepard said into the silence he’d left behind. Kaidan wasn’t saying anything; Shepard couldn’t read his face. It was so simple sometimes, so impossible others. That was like a mine-field, too. You never knew what you were gonna get and Shepard hadn’t decided on a navigation course. He kept crashing into things, Kaidan-shaped things, no matter where he thought he was headed. ‘Can’t help this bastard—don’t want to. But Finch wants him free and if Finch doesn’t get what he wants, he has to make good on his threats. Otherwise the rest of the Reds will know he doesn’t have the muscle for leadership, and they’ll take him out on the way to the top.’

‘Destroy each other with infighting, you mean?’ Kaidan asked.

At least he didn’t have that expression on his face most people got at the prospect of all those bad seeds wiping each other off the grid. _Clean-up_ , officials called it. And they never had to get their uniforms dirty, so smug about the strategy.

‘That’s not all they’d destroy,’ Shepard replied. ‘Not to mention Anderson’s already breathing down my neck about my performance or whatever it is. Watching me like a damn sentinel around the clock.’

‘He’s not the only one.’ Kaidan didn’t look away. Shepard could see all the darkness in his eyes and all the brightness alongside it, just like the sky at night. He could see the familiar twitch of his lips, not a struggle to smile or to keep from smiling. It looked close to disapproval, which was worse than if he’d been outright angry, but there was something in it Shepard liked.

Or maybe that was just Kaidan’s face, his mouth, that Shepard had feelings for.

‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘We’ve gotta get off this level before somebody finds us here. Now that’d make for one messy clean-up.’

‘You wouldn’t…’ Kaidan began.

Shepard took him by the arm, gloved fingers pressed against the lean muscle of his bicep beneath his standard recruit blues. Kaidan tensed, then eased. ‘Wouldn’t what?’ Shepard asked, flashing a grin he didn’t mean.

‘You wouldn’t,’ Kaidan said again.

It wasn’t a question. And anyway, he was right.

*


	10. ALENKO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some kissing, finally. And other things. (Sorry for not replying to comments; loading AO3 has become pretty impossible! I'll get back to them soon and thanks for reading/commenting/kudosing despite the slowness of the site!)

The training room was dark and quiet, and Shepard hadn’t bothered with turning on a simulation scenario, no Thessian landscapes or glowing Illium high-rises in the distance. It was what it was, nothing more, and it was hard to think of a way it could be something less.

Across the way, keeping his distance, Shepard was toying with the settings, running his thumb over a keypad without waiting for a direction first. The shape of his shoulders and the back of his shaved head were shadowed but strong.

He really had grown since Kaidan met him the first time. There was power in his shoulders now, not just determination.

This place—it wasn’t good for everyone.

But it was good for him.

The idea that he’d throw it away not on a technicality but because of some misplaced concept of gang loyalty—or because some idiot from his past was leaning on him for a favor he didn’t deserve—cleared up Kaidan’s headache with something stronger. It was sharper than frustration, darker than annoyance. It was anger.

Shepard deserved—no, he _had_ a future here.

Maybe, Kaidan admitted, because Shepard wasn’t talking and there was too much space to think in the silence, it was a little selfish. He didn’t want Shepard to screw things up because he didn’t want Shepard to go anywhere. Kaidan wouldn’t follow him if he was discharged and the galaxy was too big to keep bumping into the same person.

Vancouver was one thing. But this was bigger than them—bigger than the Sol system, even.

Kaidan cleared his throat and Shepard turned, tense and wary. His reflexes were sharp as ever, even turian sharp, and his eyes just as bright as they always were. That didn’t make it any easier for Kaidan to read or understand them, but he didn’t have to all the time.

Just once in a while would be enough, if he could get that far.

It wasn’t settling for something less. It was understanding his limits and working with them. He scratched the back of his neck and it wasn’t the same, his own fingers touching the old scar.

‘Shepard,’ Kaidan said.

‘Kaidan,’ Shepard replied.

It was enough to make Kaidan roll his eyes—but that was a good thing. Some of the tension in Shepard’s jaw eased up, reminding Kaidan of how soft his mouth was.

There was only one natural follow-up to the chain, but Kaidan couldn’t bring himself to say it just yet. _John_ was on the tip of his tongue, but that name didn’t belong here. Call him old-fashioned, but Kaidan wanted to wait until they were alone—really alone, not borrowing private time on Alliance territory—to use it.

‘You know,’ Kaidan said, ‘when we first met, I thought you were a real tough guy.’

He knew how it made him sound—like their first meeting had been a lifetime ago instead of a single birthday. But he was willing to own that if it meant Shepard looking his way, pulling him out of his thoughts to get him back on track. There were no grizzled turian commanders here, no one to protect Shepard from but himself.

Kaidan knew he’d be up to the challenge. He could trust himself to handle it. He had the training; now all he needed was to let Shepard know it.

Shepard laughed, hand over his heart like Kaidan had shot him point blank.

‘Are you saying I’m _not?’_ he asked.

‘I’m saying you’re smarter than that.’ The lighting around them flickered, scenery almost coming to life before Shepard changed his mind, flipping ahead to something new. Kaidan didn’t mind the darkness. He could use the cover, since apparently tonight he was pouring his heart out every chance he got—and some extra on top for good measure.

It wasn’t sitting as bad as the fishdogs had in his gut, but that didn’t mean it made him comfortable either.

Shepard grinned, not as hard as usual, turning away from the control bank to rest his weight against it. He scuffed his heel against the floor, almost relaxed enough to make someone believe he wasn’t all hard angles ready to jump.

 _Almost_. But Kaidan knew better.

‘You keep it up with all this flattery and I’m gonna roll over and let you rub my belly, Kaidan,’ he said.

‘I’d let you follow me home,’ Kaidan said, ‘but I think we’ve already covered that.’

Shepard laughed. It wasn’t loud or pronounced, but Kaidan saw his shoulders go up, saw the twitch in his mouth that twisted the old scar along his jawline. He lifted his hand to rub at it, like he knew what Kaidan was watching, if not why.

‘This where I remind you I’m not housebroken?’ Shepard asked.

‘You’re not an old dog yet,’ Kaidan replied. ‘I’m pretty sure you can still learn a few new tricks.’

Shepard tilted his head back, staring up at the blank, black ceiling. He looked thoughtful, or like he knew how ridiculous the conversation was getting. He drummed his fingers against the edge of the control bank, never one to stay still. It made Kaidan feel restless somewhere deeper than instinct. It made him want to move or channel that energy or watch it take shape on its own into something special, something real.

‘Man.’ Shepard huffed a sigh up into the air. ‘Never thought I’d be speaking in code _this_ early on in my career.’

‘A career you won’t even have,’ Kaida reminded him, ‘if this…Finch guy has anything to say about it.’

‘I’m not gonna let a guy like Finch shoot me out of the sky,’ Shepard said.

‘Really?’ Kaidan took a step forward. For some reason, it was a lot more difficult than it should’ve been. There were no barriers between them, no tests set up to show them how slow their reaction times were. There was no course designed to push him past his limits, nothing to climb or crawl through. But Kaidan would’ve had an easier time with that stuff than walking in a straight line toward Shepard. He managed the first step, but only because he was so stubborn. ‘’Cause it looks to me like that’s exactly what was happening. I mean—breaking into level five, taking classified information… What do you think would’ve happened if you got caught?’

‘I didn’t, did I?’ Shepard asked.

‘Yeah, actually,’ Kaidan said. ‘You did.’

Shepard lowered his eyes from the ceiling at last. Now they were on the same level—and Kaidan didn’t have to imagine what Shepard was seeing because Shepard was looking straight at him. ‘You don’t count,’ he said. ‘You’re not like anybody else.’

The way he said it made Kaidan feel like a live round, like a fire in the engine room. There was no trusting that feeling. There was no getting enough.

They had to keep their heads clear to figure this out but the closer Kaidan got, the more he felt it—right in the center of his belly, the way Shepard’s body worked a number on him. He wasn’t used to it yet. He didn’t know if he ever would be.

All he knew was that he wanted the chance, without messing things up first.

‘We need to think through this,’ Kaidan said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Sure we do.’ Shepard was still watching, elbows and knees bent, one ankle crossed over the other. ‘…We, huh?’

That was his style. Always pointing out the target before he went after it. He backed it up with action, as close to fearless as a krogan sometimes, but he wasn’t invincible. Kaidan had seen those bruises.

The reason they’d worked so well together in the simulation room was because of the way they looked after each other. Kaidan didn’t think everything would always be that straightforward, that simple, but there was no reason they couldn’t work like that more often than not. Together, even, without always being distracted or distracting.

‘You want to wait around and see if Finch makes good on his threats?’ Kaidan asked.

‘Never said I planned on it,’ Shepard replied. ‘Guess I was thinking I’d work a little of the patented Shepard charm on him, ease him off a little.’

‘Yeah.’ Kaidan couldn’t help but snort. ‘Okay. Right. Of course. That’s… That’s a great plan, Shepard.’

‘Works most of the time.’ Shepard shifted the angle of his hips and Kaidan took one more step—closer again, always wanting to be closer. ‘Worked on you, even, and you’re a tough one to crack, Kaidan Albert Alenko.’

At least it wasn’t pudding. There were some things even Kaidan couldn’t swallow.

The thought made him swallow again. He didn’t want to blink—Shepard could change so much in half a second, because he was fast like that—but that meant he had to keep staring and Shepard had to know it.

The good thing was, Shepard was staring right back.

That was where they met halfway. Shepard fiddled with a switch, running his fingers over buttons, his touch making them glow and dim as it skimmed the heat-sensitive dials. Kaidan knew the feeling. He reacted the same way to Shepard’s hands.

‘I’m not letting you get into any heat on my account,’ Shepard said. ‘Finch isn’t your problem. I can deal with him.’

‘And if the patented Shepard charm doesn’t work?’ Kaidan asked.

‘Guess I’ll have to knock him around a little, then.’ Shepard shrugged but Kaidan could read it; it wasn’t as easy as it wanted to be. ‘All that Alliance training has to come in handy somehow.’

‘Uh huh,’ Kaidan said. ‘You _know_ you can’t solve all your problems just by hitting them, right?’

It was more complicated than that, and Shepard was too smart not to get it. But Shepard was leaning toward him now, snaking out an arm to slip it around Kaidan’s waist, pulling him across that final distance. It wasn’t exactly giving in and it wasn’t exactly like being held, either, but they were standing side by side—and that had to count for something.

Kaidan bumped his hip against Shepard’s, a move he’d learned from the pros. Shepard slid his fingers through Kaidan’s belt loop, but he didn’t tilt his head to look at him.

‘I’m not about to let anyone mess this up, Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan couldn’t tell if he was talking about his Alliance career—or his arm around Kaidan’s waist.

Maybe it was both. Maybe they were tied together after all and that was Kaidan’s excuse for feeling so invested in Shepard’s future.

That didn’t account for all of it, but Kaidan would take it. For now.

‘Don’t keep me on the sidelines,’ Kaidan said. He could see what Shepard was flipping through now, a list of combat option scenarios that took place in turian space. They were both too young to have fought in the First Contact War, but every human felt the ripples. Kaidan’s dad never voiced an opinion one way or the other, but Kaidan liked to think he would’ve felt the same way Shepard did about gangs turning terrorist. ‘Whether you like it or not, everyone needs backup. Run off alone, and there’s no one to pull your ass out of the fire. And—well—I’ve gotten pretty attached to it, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Damn.’ Shepard cleared his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing in the reflected glow of the control panel. At some point since they’d come to the station, he’d started shaving for real, but the stubble grew back by the end of the day—and he’d been too busy to look after it this morning, too caught up in the business for Finch. ‘You were starting to sound like Anderson there for a minute.’

‘Before I started talking about your ass, I hope,’ Kaidan said.

‘I don’t know if I’m Anderson’s type.’ Shepard rubbed Kaidan’s hip, settling on a night view from Tuchanka, a giant moon projected against the far wall. ‘All the time I’ve been spending in his office—you’re not jealous, are you?’

‘Do I have to be?’ Kaidan asked.

Shepard laughed again, lower this time, deeper. It got stuck in the back of his throat as he leaned forward, kissing Kaidan’s jaw right below his ear. Kaidan could feel the prickle of stubble and the skirting heat of his breath, the faint nip of his teeth after—because Shepard always had to have that edge.

And Kaidan liked it. He liked it more than any feeling there was, whatever came with Shepard’s hard, capable hands, how he never backed down from a fight. He kissed with the same determination and Kaidan thought, or wanted to think, that Shepard had it all figured out. When it was just the two of them…

It felt like that could be enough.

It wasn’t; there was so much more to worry about. They couldn’t spend the rest of their lives bunkered down in a simulation room because, eventually, they were going to get shipped off to those places for real. But not all of this was practice. Most of it meant more than that. Kaidan covered the hand on his hip, rubbing Shepard’s knuckles through his gloves.

‘What’re we gonna do, Shepard?’ Kaidan asked.

‘We’ll figure it out.’ Shepard kissed Kaidan’s pulse, buzzed scalp tickling his ear. ‘You’re pretty smart.’

‘So’re you,’ Kaidan said. ‘When you want to be.’

‘When I’m not thinking about you,’ Shepard replied.

His hand moved lower. Kaidan’s hand followed it. They had to do something but not tonight, anyway, and Kaidan had missed this—especially because he hadn’t known if he’d get a chance to have it again. Shepard acting dodgy, disappearing in the middle of their first date, running around like he was up to something… It all added up to _I don’t want to see you anymore_ or something close to it, and now Shepard’s palm was saying something else. Something better, a whole lot closer to what Kaidan was hoping for.

He covered the back of Shepard’s hand with his own as it slipped between his legs; Shepard’s hold tugged Kaidan close against his side, ass pressed into Shepard’s hip. He almost knew what to expect—after all, they’d gone at it a lot—but there was always something new about it, always something fresh. Kaidan didn’t gasp but he did have to remind himself to breathe while Shepard palmed his dick, while the feel of Shepard’s hard body made Kaidan harder than ever.

‘You don’t have anything to be jealous about,’ Shepard said, low and muffled on Kaidan’s skin. ‘Anderson’s not _my_ type. He’s a great guy and all, but…’

‘Can we maybe not talk about Anderson right now?’ Kaidan asked.

Shepard’s chuckle was just as hot as his hand on Kaidan’s dick through his fatigues, under his belt. Shepard flicked that open and slid it loose and never stopped touching Kaidan where he needed to be touched, like there really wasn’t anything to worry about. Kaidan pushed back against his hip—and it was almost like dancing, except for the part where Shepard was actually good at it.

‘Okay, Kaidan,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan let his eyes fall shut.

It didn’t matter whether the light was coming from a projector or the real Tuchanka moon. It was nothing compared to the heat on Kaidan’s face, the way it spread down the back of his neck and under his collar, while Shepard pushed his gloved fingers past Kaidan’s open fly. He followed the touch, fingertips skirting the back of Shepard’s wrist.

‘You don’t have anything to be jealous about,’ Shepard repeated.

‘Okay,’ Kaidan whispered. ‘Okay.’

He couldn’t muster much more than that, voice shattering into shrapnel with every breath he took, bracing himself on the control deck at Shepard’s side—and then, with his hand on Shepard’s hip, so they were both holding each other up. He bowed his head and Shepard kissed the nape of his neck; Kaidan could feel his lashes fluttering under the hairline while he drew his lips slow over the scar.

‘Damn, you’re hot,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan almost laughed. Instead, he found he couldn’t breathe, biting back a moan.

This was training, too—of a sort. How to keep your balance when your whole world was spinning off its axis. Shepard made Kaidan dizzy, and working through that—it was a talent he hadn’t perfected yet.

He was trying, though. He was gonna keep on trying.

Relief spread through him like a rush of biotic energy, tingling in his blood and making his muscles run slack. All the scenarios he’d started to cook up in his head, reasons Shepard might have for avoiding him ever since he’d run off from the Fishdog Food Factory—they’d turned out to be nothing more than hot air. He’d gotten so used to bracing himself for the worst every time that it was an honest surprise when things didn’t work out that way for Kaidan Alenko.

Shepard made a noise in the back of his throat, impatient as his fingers brushing over Kaidan’s dick. He gave it a gentle squeeze before letting go, hand traveling over Kaidan’s hip and down to feel the curve of his ass. Kaidan did his best to keep from outright squirming—which would give it all away too fast, how badly he wanted this and just how much power Shepard had over him when it really came down to the wire.

Even when Kaidan wasn’t feeling confident about the choices he’d made in life, he couldn’t get Shepard out of his head. He was there to stay, and in a mind that was mostly full of bad memories, Kaidan guessed he’d go for that over the alternative, wondering about the chances he’d taken instead of the ones he hadn’t. The stuff he almost had; the guy he really wanted.

‘Listen,’ Kaidan said, forehead to Shepard’s shoulder while Shepard palmed Kaidan’s ass, coaxing his legs wider in the dark. ‘All I meant before was… You’re not alone. And it’s not one of those Alliance ‘we’re as strong as humanity makes us’ talks either. You and me, we’re not…’ His breath caught in his throat as Shepard’s hands slipped between his legs, knuckles deliberately brushing against the weight of his balls. Kaidan gripped his arm. ‘I’m not _going_ anywhere.’

Shepard chuckled, but it was short and quiet. It was hard to be mad when it sounded so intimate—when all Kaidan had been looking for was some confirmation of the same.

And it was hard to pin a guy like Shepard down—but that didn’t mean Kaidan wasn’t giving it his best shot.

He could take him. He knew the stats; he knew the score. Shepard was good at what he did but Kaidan was, too, and he had more control over his own strength than ever.

Trusting somebody else was all about trusting yourself. With one of Shepard’s palms between his legs and the other at the small of his back, fingers splayed wide over his ass, Kaidan realized that was something he could do. If his knees hadn’t buckled yet, they weren’t going to.

He could take him.

When Kaidan moved forward, Shepard eased into it, letting it happen. The backs of his thighs hit the edge of the control deck and that braced them in place, although Shepard’s elbow knocked a button and some simulation storm winds started up, whipping at their faces. Shepard laughed, Kaidan fumbling around his body to turn it off, and in the stillness that followed Kaidan kissed Shepard hard, teeth scraping, hips bumping. They didn’t fit, not at all, but Kaidan figured they didn’t actually have to. It was more about knowing where one of them ended and the other one began—and seeing how good it could feel testing those limits, pushing the borders, getting over themselves and getting off on each other.

‘You’re not even listening to what I’m saying,’ Kaidan said. He kissed Shepard’s jaw while he spoke, the line of stubble Shepard hadn’t shaved, rough against his lips. A new sensation. ‘Are you?’

‘Kinda hard when you just flipped the switch on my brain,’ Shepard replied, giving his ass another squeeze. ‘It’s like _you’re_ not listening. Don’t I always tell you—’

‘You drive me pretty crazy, too,’ Kaidan admitted.

Shepard’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. Kaidan coaxed his mouth open and turned one of his own moves against him, tongue over Shepard’s bottom lip, hands at his shoulders. Kaidan wanted more than that, though—he always had—and maybe it was greedy or asking for too much. Maybe he had to do it anyway, put it out there, so they could both see what it was for once.

Even if they didn’t have a strategy or a name for it, they’d deal with that later.

It wasn’t easy. Nothing about Shepard was. He made it hard even as he made Kaidan hard and the worst part was how he knew it.

But Shepard wasn’t grinning now. His eyes weren’t on the ceiling and when Kaidan pulled back just enough to push forward into his hand again, he realized Shepard was watching him. Low, blue, intense. All the elements that made up who he was underneath the sweaty white t-shirt and the gloves he was still wearing.

‘Lemme take those off,’ Kaidan said, resting his hand on the back of Shepard’s wrist.

He wasn’t something Shepard couldn’t afford to leave his fingerprints on. In fact, that was exactly what he wanted. Shepard’s breath caught again, deeper in his mouth this time, all the way in the back of his throat. He tried to shrug while Kaidan rolled the first glove down his hand, inside out as he pulled it free. It was tense instead of relaxed, so he flexed and curled his fingers, making his hand into a fist before flattening it against Kaidan’s stomach, feeling it when he sucked in a breath of his own.

‘That was hot,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan thought about telling him he could see it in his eyes, but the silence was better for that. Shepard licked his lips and Kaidan was close enough to feel the very tip of his tongue as it darted out.

Honestly, it was a relief—so much of one that only the rigorous training Kaidan had undergone kept his hands from shaking as he pulled off Shepard’s second glove. He left them on the dimmed lights of the control deck at Shepard’s side, mirroring the action with his own tongue on his lips. Kaidan could almost taste Shepard’s skin with it, a moment slowed down like they were pushing past a kinetic barrier, and the whole thing was about to break from holding too much in for way too long.

‘Damn,’ Shepard added.

On purpose or not—he had a way of making Kaidan feel good about himself. And bad about himself, too, like he had no idea what he was doing and never would, but that was all part of the way he shook Kaidan up, rearranged the parts into something less comfortable but probably stronger in the long run. Kaidan could feel the furrow in his brow, Shepard’s body humming when he chuckled.

‘You’re thinking too hard,’ he said. ‘Not the only thing that’s hard, either. Cut it out, before you give yourself another one of those headaches.’

He knew about Kaidan’s weaknesses, where he liked to be touched best. He knew a lot of things Kaidan didn’t and he was damn fast with the frag grenades, probably the top shot in their class, but he couldn’t cover all his angles alone, not all the time.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Kaidan said again.

He figured it could use a little repeating.

‘Yeah,’ Shepard said. His pupils were wide, narrow rings of blue framing them like the lights in a galaxy map. Kaidan wondered if he was ever gonna get to a point where everything would finally stop reminding him of Shepard, before he realized he wasn’t sure if he wanted to. ‘You said that already. I remember.’

‘Huh.’ Kaidan grinned, giving Shepard a measured shove back before he tugged him in close again and right up to his face, like he was about to deliver an imitation krogan headbutt. ‘So _now_ you’re listening.’

‘I’m always listening,’ Shepard said.

It was nothing but the truth, one of those offhand statements a guy like Shepard could make and have it sound like a whole lot more, but it still threw off Kaidan’s balance. That was the opening Shepard had been waiting for, since it was all it took for him to shift their center of gravity, pushing Kaidan back against the control panel with the same show of force he used in basic training. They’d never fought hand to hand before, but Kaidan always watched. And he’d always wondered what it might be like on the receiving end of one of Shepard’s throws.

Now he knew, though it wasn’t the first time Shepard had knocked the wind out of him.

‘Easy,’ Kaidan said. ‘We don’t have to rush.’ His voice didn’t sound like it belonged to him, caught lower and frantic as Shepard lifted him by the hips.

Kaidan’s ass turned on the simulator, the scenery around them flaring to life. Holographic cars sped past in an Illium skyscape; Shepard pushed his legs apart and the view changed, flickering to a jungle world with wide palm fronds that obscured the horizon Kaidan didn’t recognize.

‘We’re gonna break it,’ Kaidan said. He didn’t flinch when Shepard’s tongue traced a hot, wet line up the inside of his thigh. The bite that came a second later shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it made him jump.

The simulation screens jumped with him, casting everything in a red light as the deserts of Mars stormed around them.

‘Maybe you should stop worrying about Alliance equipment and start worrying about your own,’ Shepard said.

He had a point.

So there Kaidan was, fatigues pulled down around his knees before falling to his ankles, but still in his briefs, his thighs spread wide open, weight braced between his elbow and a flickering control panel. His skin was hot and Shepard’s mouth was damp while the cotton of Kaidan’s briefs was damper still, and Shepard mouthed around it, nose pressed to Kaidan’s hip. All Kaidan could see was the top of Shepard’s head, colored by the sandstorm; he reached down to touch it, running his fingers over the texture of the buzz. When his hips bucked up, Shepard down below on his knees, Kaidan managed to switch the projector off as he landed.

It was just the two of them, everything dark. Kaidan saw the shapes Shepard made in the shadows but he couldn’t even see his own hands—all he could do was feel Shepard’s lips on him, the moment when Shepard drew the elastic of Kaidan’s briefs down and freed his dick to the cool air. It was only on its own for a second before Shepard’s mouth was on it again: lips spread, no teeth, and gentle. Always gentle when he could be, tough as krogan hide at the same time.

That was who Shepard was.

Kaidan tightened his hold, palms cupping the back of Shepard’s head, and let himself come.

*


	11. SHEPARD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard mans up.

It was almost perfect.

It came closer than anything else Shepard had ever known, anything else he’d never let himself dream about. Kaidan, slumped on the ground with his fatigues on one of the mats next to him, leg splayed around Shepard’s lap, and Shepard touching the small of his back under the fabric of his tee, the little dimples above his hipbones and flanking his spine. It was one of his favorite spots in the galaxy, definitely on Arcturus, and Shepard couldn’t stop touching it, the smell and the feel and the warmth and everything.

It would’ve been completely perfect if the whole Finch thing wasn’t still hanging over his head. But if wishes were fishdogs, Shepard never would’ve gone hungry when he was running with the Reds. Running the Reds, even.

Right now, there was nothing between his mouth and Kaidan’s skin, Kaidan’s sweat, and lying to himself was impossible. Kaidan would feel it; Shepard didn’t want things to go sour that way. Not again.

But he was always throwing other guys for a loop. He _was_ the frag grenade, getting out of the blast zone before what he set down lit up the sky.

He rubbed Kaidan’s skin. And the swell of his body as he breathed, in and out and so damn steady, kept Shepard’s breathing even on the other side.

It was dark, but Shepard’s internal clock—set to standard Alliance time these days—was telling him it was getting too late, or too early, to hang around pretending they’d solved everything and all they needed was each other. Shepard knew all about conditions inside a vacuum now, how long a guy could last before the pressure vaporized him. He closed his eyes and swallowed; he knew when Kaidan felt the impulse, sensed the change.

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said. ‘What’re you… What’re you thinking?’

‘The usual stuff,’ Shepard replied.

‘…Gonna tell me what that is?’ Kaidan asked.

Shepard swallowed again, knuckles curling against Kaidan’s spine. ‘Mostly that you’re hot—burning up, even. That these mats are pretty damn uncomfortable for lying around on and that, crazy mom with a Kessler aside, your bed back on Vancouver’s _way_ better for this kind of thing.’ Actually saying stuff out loud was just like hotwiring a transport; once the sparks were flying, all you had to do was build up some momentum—and try not to crash the damn thing. But Shepard had never been top of his class behind the steering wheel. ‘And, you know. That I’ve gotta take care of this Finch situation.’

‘That _we’ve_ gotta…’ Kaidan paused.

There was that crash Shepard was bracing for.

‘He’s not your problem,’ Shepard said.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan replied. ‘He definitely is.’

‘He’s a big problem,’ Shepard said.

‘I’ve had big problems,’ Kaidan replied.

If they hadn’t been talking about what they were talking about, the conversation would’ve been easy. Just like holding Kaidan was almost perfect, it came close—but it missed the mark last second.

‘I was in this program,’ Kaidan continued. There was another crash, but Shepard hadn’t prepared for it. ‘For biotics training on Jump Zero. Back then, we all called it Brain Camp. But it didn’t exactly… It didn’t work out. Some things happened there I wasn’t—that I’m still not proud of.’

Shepard wanted to tell him to stop. It was the right thing to do—or at least the noble thing, which around here counted for the same. Kaidan didn’t have to explain himself to anyone, least of all to a guy like Shepard. Shepard hadn’t earned that yet. But then, it didn’t feel like his place to tell Kaidan what he could and couldn’t talk about.

Shepard didn’t set limits. He broke them.

‘Can’t win ’em all,’ he said, in place of what he wanted to. At least that much was the truth. Even rich kids who’d grown up with every advantage an Earth upbringing had to offer wound up with their fair share of problems. It was just the way of the galaxy.

Kaidan nodded, but Shepard could tell he wasn’t really listening. He was somewhere else, a place Shepard had never been, remembering things Shepard hadn’t been a part of. Judging by the look on his face, Shepard could assume he should be glad he wasn’t there, but that it stuck around—that he remembered every part of it as clear as if he was still living it.

‘This was back in the… _experimental_ days of human biotics,’ Kaidan said. His hand was on Shepard’s shoulder, thumb tracing distracted patterns back and forth over his collarbone. It’d broken once, set wrong, and Kaidan was feeling the old crack—not that it hurt anymore, just that it was obvious. ‘They didn’t have anyone to teach us, so they hired this old turian commander to do it.’

‘Badass,’ Shepard said.

They both knew he didn’t mean it. Someone had to keep the pressure off in this conversation, and the only way Shepard knew how was to keep poking holes in it.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan said. ‘He might’ve been, if he wasn’t _so_ old that he was still living in the First Contact war. I think he hated most of us on sight, which didn’t make for a real positive learning environment.’

Shepard had a good sense for when to cut ties and run. His instincts had saved him on countless jobs—knowing when a situation was about to explode in his face gave him the few seconds he needed to duck any impact before it hit him square on.

Kaidan wasn’t a bad decision about to kick him in the gut, but the story he was telling gave Shepard that same feeling. He dug his knuckles into Kaidan’s spine, giving him a rub just to remind him of where he was.

‘So what?’ Shepard asked. ‘He failed you?’

‘I killed him,’ Kaidan said. ‘…It’s kind of a long story.’

‘I don’t know.’ Shepard took a moment. It made sense and it didn’t at the same time, exactly like Kaidan himself. ‘I think you just told it.’

‘That wasn’t all.’ Kaidan was still breathing, but it wasn’t steady anymore. The shaky heat ghosted over Shepard’s jaw the way Kaidan’s fingers shaped the broken bone beneath a few freckles neither of them could see. ‘They shut the place down after, covered the whole thing up, and I guess… For a while, I didn’t really trust myself. When push came to shove, obviously… I pushed back and it was too hard.’

‘So you hung out at places like _Inferno_ , wasting time and pretending anybody would believe a face like yours belonged with the rest of us,’ Shepard said.

‘Yeah,’ Kaidan replied. ‘I guess I did.’

‘This turian,’ Shepard asked. ‘Did he hurt you?’

Kaidan paused. There was another kind of heat Shepard didn’t know how to name—the one that’d put him between Kaidan and danger every time, despite his better instincts. It was pure, grade-a dumbass, but there was no changing it now.

‘Not me,’ Kaidan said at last. ‘It was this girl I knew. Rahna. We…liked each other, I guess. And I always thought something might come out of it, if we ever got the chance. She messed up and he went after her, so I figured—I had to do something. But after it was over… She wouldn’t even look at me.’

‘I’ve seen what you can do, you know.’ Shepard muffled his voice against Kaidan’s cheek, pressed close enough that his stubble tickled Kaidan’s skin. Kaidan twitched; his body had to react, and that reaction was just what Shepard needed to distract him. Shepard knew him, better than anybody. ‘Back in _Inferno_ , sure, that was something—I knew you were the real deal even then. And I’ve seen your records—’

‘Hold on,’ Kaidan said. ‘You haven’t been hacking the system _regularly,_ have you?’

Shepard chose not to answer the question and kept moving while he still could. ‘—and I know you’re top of your class, Kaidan Alenko. Kaidan _Albert_ Alenko. And not just because of the biotics, either. Says you keep a cool head under pressure and everything—although I could’ve told them that. If I ever had some turian knocking me around…’

‘Good thing you never did,’ Kaidan said.

‘Maybe once or twice,’ Shepard admitted. ‘Just not as serious. Besides—I can handle myself. Especially when it comes to turians.’

Kaidan pursed his lips—against Shepard’s forehead, the scar on his scalp—and puffed a slow breath. It sounded like an airlock being opened that hadn’t been touched in a long, long time, finally letting some of the pressurized air out. He was still tense, but he hadn’t shrugged Shepard off yet.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Shepard said. _His_ voice sounded like something old, too, and rusted, like stolen tech he had to scrape the scum off first before he could pawn it. ‘…Unless Finch gets my ass kicked out, of course.’

Kaidan’s hands traveled down Shepard’s arms, over muscles Shepard was starting to be real proud of, over his hips, to give the top of his ass a squeeze. ‘Not gonna happen.’

‘Why—are you gonna do something about it?’ Shepard asked.

‘Maybe,’ Kaidan replied.

‘Maybe, huh?’ Shepard lifted his head and Kaidan’s lips were right there waiting for him.

Once they got started, Shepard knew they could go all day—or at least until a bright-eyed bunch of recruits filed in for their training, totally unprepared for the show they were about to get. Keeping practical was the one thing Shepard _really_ did best. It helped keep his feet on the ground and a guy like him needed that gravity so he didn’t go drifting off into deep space without anybody around to notice he was gone.

‘C’mon,’ Shepard said, trying to pull back. ‘Where’s the cool head when you need it, right?’

‘That’s always been my problem around you.’ Kaidan shifted, sliding off Shepard’s lap with a muffled thump against the training mat. It squeaked and Shepard reached for his fatigues, handing them over. ‘…Thanks.’

‘Hey, I take ‘em off, I’d better help put ‘em back on, right?’ Shepard hitched his hips back into his own pair, doing up the fly one-handed. ‘Even if I like the view better the other way around.’

Kaidan grunted, halfway to disapproving, but as usual Shepard was just too damn charming for him to make it all the way there.

He’d get used to it eventually. Shepard had tamed way more serious targets than Kaidan Alenko in his day, so it was only a matter of time before he reined Kaidan in like a krogan harnessing a thresher maw—although something told him that Kaidan wouldn’t go down easy. They were evenly matched, maybe even a _good_ match. The idea made Shepard feel warm through and through, same as when the mess hall cook got creative with basic proteins.

Times like these, Shepard was extra-grateful there was no mind-reading funny business that came hand in hand with biotic abilities. He could take a lot at the end of the day, but knowing his thoughts weren’t his own might’ve been the final push.

‘You realize we’re _screwed_ for tomorrow,’ Kaidan said. Something in his tone made Shepard settle, like it had nothing to do with Finch or the way they’d been so caught up in avoiding each other they’d almost torn a good thing to pieces.

Shepard knew better than to act like a varren. So it was about time he started proving it.

‘Love it when you talk dirty, Kaidan.’ Shepard stretched his arms above his head, relishing the crack between his shoulder blades as his back recalibrated. ‘Pretty sure tomorrow’s already today.’

Sooner or later, his body wasn’t gonna bounce back. He’d probably have to start treating it right _before_ Anderson caught wind of him staying up all night on top of the wringer he put himself through in daily training.

It was weird, feeling like he had someone to impress other than himself. It’d take some time before Shepard could decide whether he could live with it or not.

Kaidan yawned, covering his mouth with the back of his hand before he could work out a retort. ‘You really never turn it off, do you?’

They were both tired, too worn down for Shepard to think much about the Finch problem or any concessions he’d made to let Kaidan help him out. If _that_ had been his plan all along, Shepard was gonna have to give him credit. He never saw it coming.

And knowing somebody who could pull a surprise move or two at the final hour—that was an asset. Shepard liked assets, not just asses.

‘Something funny?’ Kaidan asked.

‘Probably better if I don’t tell you,’ Shepard said.

Kaidan gave him a sideways look, then let it roll off his back. That was part of the training, too, knowing when to fold and when something was worth a fight. Shepard was starting to get it, the balance that was more than just the weight of their bodies pressed together.

‘Just…don’t try and take this one on your own, all right?’ Kaidan stood, doing the final button on his fly while he was still on his knees before he got up on his feet. ‘There’s a reason we work in teams here, right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Shepard replied, with just enough of a cocky grin that Kaidan had to look away to hide how much he liked it.

He didn’t shy away from the rest—reaching down to give Shepard a hand, helping him up. Shepard knew he could do it on his own, no problem, but he took the easier option for once, thumb running over the inside of Kaidan’s warm palm, the calluses on his fingertips making Kaidan shiver.

Kaidan’s arm tensed. He braced himself with his feet planted square on the mats and Shepard let him do it, with a little help along the way.

They stood eye to eye. ‘Used to be a time when you were taller,’ Shepard said, which made Kaidan shiver again. It was lighter than a touch but it lasted longer and Shepard felt something at the base of his spine try to answer. They didn’t have time for it—so they’d have to wait until later.

Despite what Anderson thought, Shepard totally had restraint. He had nerves of pure Kevlar for resisting the temptations he’d always steered clear of—and maybe he’d make a better pilot than he thought.

‘We’ll figure this out,’ Kaidan said.

‘Sounding all official,’ Shepard replied. ‘I like it. Next thing you know, you’ll be giving me orders and everything.’

Kaidan snorted. ‘Like you’ll listen.’

Shepard looped an arm around his waist, pulling him close for a hot second. They didn’t kiss but the promise that they could again later meant more than Shepard’s usual stolen credit chits in terms of collateral.

Then, Shepard let Kaidan go, running recon for him—scouting ahead to make sure the halls were still empty and they had the all clear. When he saw that they were, he threw the signal, and Kaidan did pretty well for himself, making no sound as they headed back to the dorms to splash cold water on their faces and change into new t-shirts before the day began.

There wasn’t time to clean off most of the sweat and Shepard didn’t have to worry about anything other than how tired he was. He’d done more on less sleep for years; it wasn’t a problem for _him_. But Kaidan needed his shut-eye, his beauty rest, and the thought of him hiding yawns behind the back of his hand or rubbing the corner of his eye with a gloved fist all day made Shepard realize he couldn’t keep doing this.

If it was gonna happen, it needed to happen right.

He was jittery before he got onto the practice field—but when he saw it was the Mars sandstorm scenario, all that rolled off him like strobe lights off an asari’s bare skin. He knew Mars. He knew this run. And he knew how to look after his teammates, not just go for the goal and get the job done.

He knew how to do _that_ right, too.

So he did.

There were obstacles to clear but he got his guys past them first, doing the same kind of recon he had earlier that morning before while bringing up the rear. They waited on his signal and when the hostiles showed up, Shepard was the one who offered cover fire, Kessler blazing.

He was sweating by the time the projector lights faded and the main strip lights were switched back on. Time was called and it was good, damn good, and even the stiffs on his team—rich kids like Kaidan, but not like Kaidan at all—clapped him on the back. He did the same for them, pulling off his helmet and wiping the sweat out of his eyes.

Somewhere up there in observation, Anderson was watching. And he’d better be proud, Shepard thought. He’d better take notice.

It could be the last time the guy ever saw Shepard in action.

Thinking ahead still rubbed him raw sometimes, the same way the armor had when he’d first put it on. It took time to get comfortable with anything new, to build up the calluses that came with repetition. Shepard didn’t _like_ thinking ahead, but spontaneity was for people who only had themselves to think about. A leader had to consider possible outcomes—if he was gonna get his team out safely. And he _needed_ to get his team out safely.

Shepard had a team now, whether he’d asked for one or not. He wasn’t looking to blow his chances and let somebody else come in to scoop them up. That happened in the Reds and it’d happen in the Alliance, too—only difference was, the second one actually meant something for once.

He wanted to have more faith in things working out—in Anderson, if not the system he was a part of—but that wasn’t his style. He couldn’t even blame it on how much he’d seen on the streets, either, because guys like Kaidan were out there standing up for the right thing even when the Alliance had funded secret projects that scarred them for life and gave ‘em plenty of reasons to turn against it.

Some guys were just made out of better stuff. But Shepard knew how to follow an example when he saw it. Faking a thing until it came naturally was all it took to get by in the Reds and he’d be using the skills he’d learned there for a while, long after he left them behind for good.

If Anderson didn’t like that, well… He didn’t have to know _everything._ Just the stuff that he could count.

Shepard left his standard-issue in the racks, blowing off Tanaka of all people, who’d suddenly decided Shepard was the hottest thing since Hahne-Kedar Shadow Works. Better late than never—but Shepard wasn’t in the mood.

If he was still around after he sorted out the Finch dilemma, then maybe he’d see about rubbing Tanaka’s nose in it later, giving him the attention he was practically begging for.

‘Catch you at dinner,’ Ash said. She walloped Shepard one in the shoulder, but only after she’d taken off her armored glove.

It was as much of a vote of confidence as Shepard was gonna get. She might not ever know it, but it kicked him into gear and got him moving, out of the situation room and down the hall.

Kaidan fell into step with him, coming out of nowhere and flanking him like his implants came with a cloaking device.

‘Stealthy,’ Shepard said. ‘ _Real_ stealthy.’

‘It’s not that I don’t trust you,’ Kaidan replied.

‘Just that you don’t have any reason to.’ Shepard knew the way to Anderson’s office by heart and the schedule was part of that natural understanding he had for where people were and when they showed up, but especially when they left. Shepard knew it all. And the sound his boots made on the floor was clipped, rhythmic, an even beat, like he’d finally learned how to march. Kaidan matched him step for step, not missing a single one. Of course he didn’t; he was too good for that. ‘But that’s fine, Kaidan. I get it.’

‘Actually, I thought maybe we could head to dinner together,’ Kaidan said. ‘I heard they’ve got steak on the menu today. Actual steak.’

Shepard whistled. ‘I’m thinking somebody was messing with you,’ he said. ‘You know it’ll be the same old proteins with the same old gut-busting sauce and we’ll love every second of it. But, hey—I’ll see you there. …If I don’t get kicked out first.’

They came to a stop in front of Anderson’s door, his name on the plaque next to it. For a split second, Shepard wondered if he actually had the brass, the _balls_ , to walk in there and lay it on the line, something he could do in the field—not just the training courses—but couldn’t wrangle in the day-to-day. There wasn’t supposed to be a distinction between the two; living and breathing the job was the best way to keep on living and breathing, period. Shepard knew that. Only there was more to it with Kaidan standing in front of him, glancing between Shepard’s face and the name on the plaque, putting two and two together because he was just that quick.

‘Yeah,’ Shepard said, before Kaidan had to ask. ‘That’s the plan, anyway. Not my best work, but it’s not like I’ve got all the parts I need to do the job right, so…’ He held up his hands. He still had his gloves on, so he took them off.

‘…Okay,’ Kaidan replied. ‘I’ll just…wait out here, then.’

‘And come in with a few smooth biotic moves if you hear things turning sour?’ Shepard asked.

Kaidan’s mouth twisted. It was the half-grin, half-frown that Shepard had seen their first night together, the one that was practically begging to be kissed. His lips were still full from the night before, enough of a good thing to give Shepard new strength.

It wasn’t all about the muscle he’d built, the laps he’d run, the sit-ups and push-ups and extra proteins to feed a growing body. There’d been more to grow than he realized and it felt good, knowing his shoulders were broad, his back straight.

‘Hey,’ Kaidan said. ‘Shepard… You’ve got this. You’re doing the right thing.’

‘Yeah, well… Don’t tell anybody. Wouldn’t want to lose my reputation.’ Shepard moved past him, just close enough that their knuckles brushed as he went by, and the feel of Kaidan’s skin brought him back to earth, to rap on the door and hope Anderson was actually inside.

‘Permission to enter,’ Anderson said from within.

Shepard rolled his eyes so Kaidan wouldn’t have to be nervous—so he’d know it didn’t matter either way—only Kaidan was just that quick, and he had to know it did. Shepard was jittery all over again. His nerves were jangling like he’d just been hotwired and needed to fly before somebody pinned the job on him—except he’d never flown straight _at_ authorities. That was kind of the opposite of good instincts and he was so much better at figuring out how to give them the slip.

‘I’ve got this,’ Shepard said.

It wasn’t Kaidan’s voice and it didn’t sound as certain. It didn’t even sound like him.

But the door had rolled open and Kaidan couldn’t do this with him, couldn’t be implicated in it. Shepard stepped across the threshold and heard the door slide shut again, right at his back. At least it was something solid to depend on.

‘Sir,’ Shepard said, and saluted.

More than any other time he’d done it, the action came easy. It felt like it belonged.

‘At ease,’ Anderson said.

That was less easy. Shepard dropped his hand and cleared his throat and Anderson raised a brow, arms held behind his back.

‘So—this a usual thing, then?’ Shepard asked. ‘You get a lot of cadets looking to squeeze in some extra time with the bigshots, or maybe argue their training scores?’

‘Not as much as you’d think,’ Anderson said. He didn’t sound bored yet, but he wasn’t curious, either. With that face, he would’ve fit right in _and_ cleaned up at poker night on Vancouver’s docking bay.

But that was a suggestion Shepard planned on keeping to himself until further notice.

‘Well, that’s not what this is about,’ Shepard said. ‘That’s the good news. Won’t catch me having problems just like the rest.’

‘Somehow, I’m not surprised,’ Anderson replied. ‘Live as long as me, Shepard, and you learn to outmaneuver the odd bombshell dropped into your lap. Or you get good at reading new recruits, in any case. Either way, it’s better for the heart than getting blindsided every damn day.’

He took a seat, but he didn’t extend the same offer to Shepard. That worked to Shepard’s advantage, since being front-and-center with the Finch secret had him wired. He didn’t pace but it felt good to stand, folding his arms behind his back like he’d seen Anderson do. It made his shoulders sit straighter, and that wasn’t a bad thing.

Plus, he was ready to make a sprint for it and outrun the old guy if he had to.

‘You’d better spill before I get even older,’ Anderson said.

He was waiting, but it was the thought of Kaidan outside that got Shepard talking again, not just Anderson’s level gaze.

‘When it comes to bad news,’ Anderson added, ‘I’ve always found it works to your advantage if you _don’t_ give anyone the chance to anticipate just how bad it’s going to be.’

Shepard resisted the urge to rock forward on the balls of his feet. New boot soles were too stiff for that kind of thing anyway. ‘Like tearing off a bandage, right?’

‘Now why would you want to do something like that?’ Anderson asked.

Kaidan again—Shepard could see him, clear as the sunlight glinting off an ally’s polished weapon. He swallowed and braced himself for impact.

‘I ran with this gang back on Earth,’ he said, which seemed more accurate than saying he’d outright run them for a time. Shepard got it now—that running a gang was like hog-tying a thresher maw. You could control it for a while, but it was always seething below the surface, waiting to turn on you when you least expected it.

He kept that observation to himself, too. Anderson didn’t need to hear him getting philosophical on top of everything else and Shepard already felt vulnerable, like one of the test dummies on the shooting range: drilled full of holes, a big white target with accuracy zones pinned in place, taking every damn shot leveled its way.

‘Is there more to this story?’ Anderson, true to form, wasn’t showing his hand. Shepard studied his expression close and hard, but it didn’t give up any of its secrets. ‘Because I’ve heard more than my fair share exactly like it.’

‘Depends on your definition of more,’ Shepard said. After a pause, he added, ‘Sir. Seems like that sort of thing doesn’t want to stay put where you buried it. And I figured I just realized that if I let any of the gang—any of the guys know they can hold that past over me, I’ll be running too much and too hard to have time for being a soldier. …Sir.’

‘That was two sirs in the span of fifteen seconds, Shepard,’ Anderson replied. ‘Should I be worried?’

‘Not unless you’re the one who used to run with a bunch of small-time mercs who decided to turn mean after you left them.’ Shepard swallowed, remembering the list of Weisman’s offenses—the realization that shit like that was exactly what he’d enlisted to protect the galaxy _from_. ‘…So I’m coming clean. Fessing up. Never cracked and spilled my guts before in my life and I’m not naming any names, but before the information gets dropped in your lap like I was a part of the final job they want me to help them out of paying for… I’m telling you about it, sir. For the record. On the record. So there it is. Recorded.’

The dog-tags weighed heavy on Shepard’s chest, stuck beneath the fabric of his t-shirt between his skin and the cotton, damp with sweat from the range. He could feel that wet heat under his arms and at the small of his back, right between his ribs. He was ready to take the dog-tags off, give up the name _Shepard, John_ and a birthday he’d paid his entire savings to fudge, even if that wasn’t saying much. He wasn’t so ready to leave Kaidan behind but if he stayed while Kaidan had to act so stubborn about everything, then he’d end up taking a real good soldier down with him.

Kaidan had a future.

He had a past, too, and that was something Shepard hadn’t been expecting.

He swallowed again, the back of his throat dry. Anderson was letting the silence linger in exactly the way he’d told Shepard not to, which was the story of Shepard’s life so far: people giving advice that said one thing, then doing the opposite.

And Shepard wasn’t gonna be like that. Not anymore.

He’d be in shit with the Reds after this, too. The whole renegade thing… He just had to hope Kaidan still went in for it after Shepard was on the lam.

‘Is that it?’ Anderson finally asked.

Shepard blinked, like he was clearing sandstorm grit out of his eyes.

‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘These unnamed individuals from your past are—what’s the term? _Leaning_ on you? Putting the pinch on you?—and you refuse to let them see you crack.’ Anderson paused again; he had no damn tell and Shepard was too damn obvious about studying him for it. It was a rookie move, something Shepard never would’ve pulled on the streets, but Anderson was a class act, a different caliber.

It wasn’t the same and they both knew it. Shepard wasn’t in the habit of bowing to anyone or anything, but standing up straight for somebody—that was just as strange, just as new.

‘…Leaning on me, sir,’ Shepard said.

‘Hm.’ Anderson snorted and shook his head. Shepard thought he could see a glimpse of dry humor, but it was gone faster than he could say _Blasto to the rescue_ , and he didn’t know if it’d really been there or if it was nothing but a product of wishful thinking. ‘I see.’

The beads of the ball-chain at the nape of Shepard’s neck were starting to feel heavy. He reached around back to slip his thumb under them, ready to lift it free.

‘Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Shepard?’ Anderson asked.

Shepard froze. ‘Removing my tags, sir,’ he said.

‘So the Alliance can lose a soldier who has enough brains _and_ the brass to know when he needs backup?’ Anderson snorted again. ‘I’ve swallowed a lot in my time, Shepard, a _whole_ lot. Don’t make me swallow this one, too.’

There was a joke in there somewhere that could go two ways, inappropriate or ripe for the whole family. Shepard kept his lips zipped, not wanting to blow the moment of goodwill he’d lucked into. Assuming the wrong thing could upset the balance—but he’d never been good at sitting still and keeping quiet for long.

‘So…’ Shepard began. It wasn’t his best line, but he’d re-write it when he was telling the whole story to Kaidan later. Something like _I didn’t realize I had any say in what you swallowed, sir._

Maybe one day he’d know Anderson well enough to let it all hang out—but right now they were still in the honeymoon phase. When trying to impress a military man, Shepard knew better than to lead with his mouth.

Unless that man was Private Alenko. But _he_ had a whole category to himself.

‘ _So._ ’ Anderson’s face was the same as ever, that deep-lined expression that Shepard had warned Kaidan about making one time too many. ‘Let me fill in a couple blanks for myself, and you can tell me if I get any of it wrong. How’s that sound to you?’

‘Sounds like a better deal than the one I came in here expecting,’ Shepard said. When in doubt—which was more often than he was willing to admit these days—it seemed better to cop to honesty.

‘Look here—you think you’re the first recruit to start Alliance training with a checkered past behind him?’ Anderson leaned back in his chair. His gaze traveled to the ceiling, lost in a memory—or maybe he was just tired of looking at Shepard’s face. It happened to some people, or so Shepard had heard. ‘We attract all kinds here, Shepard. At least a third are just looking for an excuse to carry a legal firearm. They come in experienced, and we whip them into shape or we don’t. That’s the job.’

Shepard blinked, not remembering the last time he had. It reminded him he _hadn’t_ been frozen in place by a few ill-timed cryo rounds and he let his hands drop from the chain around his neck, figuring no one was about to march in and rip the tags off him anytime soon.

Anderson didn’t seem like the type to pull a last-minute double cross. Maybe it was a naïve assumption, but Shepard had gone a long way making a living off his instincts. A first impression was usually the right one.

‘That’s not what they say on the recruiting posters,’ Shepard said.

‘They say life and our freeze-dried proteins have one thing in common, Shepard,’ Anderson said. ‘What’s on the package never matches what you get inside. Are you really that surprised?’

Shepard almost chuckled. He turned it into a cough last-second, but Anderson was definitely pleased—because what guy didn’t like to know he’d scored with a well-timed joke?

 _Permission to laugh, sir_ , Shepard thought. It took all he had to keep quiet beyond clearing his throat.

‘Good,’ Anderson said. ‘Now you’re learning when silence _is_ appropriate. Usually, when you think you know exactly what to say, _that’s_ when you need to put a lid on it. You got that?’ Shepard nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. There’s plenty of people out there that can’t do what you do with a whole lot worse behind them already. And don’t look so damn offended, because that isn’t an insult or a blow to your _cred_ , or whatever the hell stupid lingo it’s known by these days.’

Shepard clenched his jaw to keep from grinning. The pained expression Anderson thought he saw was probably nothing more than a grimace of concentration.

Doing things by the books took about as much care and attention as keeping your neck above water in the slums. There was always something to work for. Shepard had to hone his focus, but he knew how to get a job done, no problem.

No problem that he couldn’t handle later, anyway.

‘More silence. You _are_ listening.’ Finally, Anderson stood, coming around the table. Shepard felt like he was a hot piece on display in a dealer’s back alley—like he had potential, and all he needed was some spit and shine to look like the real deal. If Anderson found he came up lacking, though, one of the parts out of place, some damage that wasn’t worth the fixing… ‘At first, I didn’t know if you had it in you. But you showed integrity today, Shepard.’

‘Feels a lot like being stupid, sir,’ Shepard said, missing the sound of his own voice too much to hold back anymore.

Anderson pursed his lips. ‘And you’ve got a long way to go yet,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be watching. Don’t disappoint me—and don’t think some tenth-rate street mercs can intimidate _Alliance brass_ , Shepard. If you keep on the straight and narrow now that you’re here, we’ve put enough credits into training you to keep you here for life. It’s up to you how long that lasts. Are we clear?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Shepard replied.

He saluted a second time; that was what he was supposed to do, but more than that, it was what he wanted to.

‘Dismissed,’ Anderson said. Shepard didn’t fall at-ease and he was halfway to the door when Anderson added, ‘Oh, and Shepard?’

‘Sir?’ The word was starting to stick in his throat like tummy-tingling Tuchanka sauce. And, what was more—he was getting used to the feeling, like it was more about what he could learn to swallow and not what Anderson had to.

‘Nice work in training today,’ Anderson told him. ‘Now get the hell out of my office.’

‘Anything for you, Captain,’ Shepard said, the door opening up into the hallway. It was like one weight had been lifted off his shoulders while another slid in to take its place, but the difference was, it wasn’t something Shepard minded carrying.

‘So,’ Kaidan said—still waiting for him outside.

Shepard would’ve put his arm around Kaidan’s shoulders right there in front of everyone only that was the old him, the one he’d left behind in Anderson’s office to keep the captain company. The new him called superior officers _sir_ and did nice work in training, enough to catch the captain’s eye.

Enough not just to catch Kaidan’s attention but to hold onto it longer than any other contraband that’d passed through Shepard’s hands before.

‘C’mon,’ Shepard said. ‘I thought you were hungry.’

‘Okay,’ Kaidan replied, glancing his way, and Shepard let it last for a second longer than regulation, because he was also—always—gonna be that guy.

**END**

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhhh, sequel nerves and jitters! Hope you guys enjoy. I'll keep it updated regularly with a new chapter every other day! <3


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